Overview

Microlink API provides a powerful API for automating any browser action.

The following examples show how to use the Microlink API with CLI, cURL, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, PHP & Golang, targeting 'https://github.com/microlinkhq' URL:

CLI Microlink API example

microlink https://github.com/microlinkhq

cURL Microlink API example

curl -G "https://api.microlink.io" \
  -d "url=https://github.com/microlinkhq"

JavaScript Microlink API example

import mql from '@microlink/mql'

const { data } = await mql('https://github.com/microlinkhq')

Python Microlink API example

import requests

url = "https://api.microlink.io/"

querystring = {
    "url": "https://github.com/microlinkhq"
}

response = requests.get(url, params=querystring)

print(response.json())

Ruby Microlink API example

require 'uri'
require 'net/http'

base_url = "https://api.microlink.io/"

params = {
  url: "https://github.com/microlinkhq"
}

uri = URI(base_url)
uri.query = URI.encode_www_form(params)

http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
http.use_ssl = true

request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri)
response = http.request(request)

puts response.body

PHP Microlink API example

<?php

$baseUrl = "https://api.microlink.io/";

$params = [
    "url" => "https://github.com/microlinkhq"
];

$query = http_build_query($params);
$url = $baseUrl . '?' . $query;

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, [
    CURLOPT_URL => $url,
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
    CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
    CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
    CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
    CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "GET"
]);

$response = curl_exec($curl);
$err = curl_error($curl);

curl_close($curl);

if ($err) {
    echo "cURL Error #: " . $err;
} else {
    echo $response;
}

Golang Microlink API example

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "net/http"
    "net/url"
    "io"
)

func main() {
    baseURL := "https://api.microlink.io"

    u, err := url.Parse(baseURL)
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    q := u.Query()
    q.Set("url", "https://github.com/microlinkhq")
    u.RawQuery = q.Encode()

    req, err := http.NewRequest("GET", u.String(), nil)
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }

    client := &http.Client{}
    resp, err := client.Do(req)
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    defer resp.Body.Close()

    body, err := io.ReadAll(resp.Body)
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }

    fmt.Println(string(body))
}

import mql from '@microlink/mql'

const { data } = await mql('https://github.com/microlinkhq')

You can hit the API directly from your browser or any environment that allows you to perform a simple HTTP GET request.

The Microlink CLI is helpful to explore the API under local development.

Giving a url as input, you get structured data as output.

{
  "status": "success",
  "data": {
    "title": "microlink.io",
    "description": "Turn websites into data. microlink.io has 34 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.",
    "lang": "en",
    "author": null,
    "publisher": "GitHub",
    "image": {
      "url": "https://avatars0.githubusercontent.com/u/29799436?s=280&v=4",
      "type": "png",
      "size": 4118,
      "height": 280,
      "width": 280,
      "size_pretty": "4.12 kB"
    },
    "date": "2020-09-22T09:33:36.000Z",
    "url": "https://github.com/microlinkhq",
    "logo": {
      "url": "https://logo.clearbit.com/github.com",
      "type": "png",
      "size": 6313,
      "height": 128,
      "width": 128,
      "size_pretty": "6.31 kB"
    }
  }
}

There are some of the most common workflow you can do with Microlink API:

Retrieve meta data from any link.
Take a screenshot or generate a pdf of the target website.
Get a predominant color palette per each image detected.
Make easy embed content directly in your HTML markup.
Identify technologies behind a target URL.
prerender mode, useful for getting more information from websites that use client-side frameworks.

The following documentation is going to teach you all these things and more.