What is a Xiaohongshu note ID, and what is an xhslink link?
A note ID is the 24 hexadecimal characters at the end of a note's link; a user ID has the same form. An xhslink.com link is the short link the app copies, which leads to a note's or a profile's full link once opened. DataXAPI reads Xiaohongshu (RedNote) with 21 endpoints, from $0.0200 a call; a failed call is not charged.
Where you see them
A note's ID is the last part of /explore/<id> in the browser's address bar, or of /discovery/item/<id> in a link the website shares. A user's ID is the last part of /user/profile/<id>. Both look like 0123456789abcdef01234567 (made up): digits and the letters a to f.
The user ID is not the handle a profile shows (小红书号, the Xiaohongshu ID the user picks); DataXAPI returns the handle as username. Xiaohongshu has not documented either format; as public open-source tools describe it, a bare ID is 24 hexadecimal characters, and an xhslink.com link is read as a note link like the other two forms.
Short links
What the app copies is a share text with http://xhslink.com/<code> in it. The code does not contain the note ID: only opening the link shows where it leads.
DataXAPI's url parameter takes it as it is, alone or in its share text: it opens the short link once, sees which note or profile it leads to, and reads the ID from there. Where it cannot be opened, paste the full link or the ID.
Which endpoints take them
xiaohongshu.notes.get and xiaohongshu.notes.comments.list take a note ID as id, or a link as url. xiaohongshu.users.get and xiaohongshu.users.notes.list take a user ID as id, or a profile link as url. An ID from a search result goes into these unchanged.
Endpoints
Each with its price; every page has the parameters, the fields and a recorded response.
Sources
What this page says of other services is from their own pages and documents, read on 2026-10-29. Prices and features change: check the source before you decide.