data

Type: <object>

It enables specific data extraction over the target url, turning Microlink API into a powerful web scraping tool.

import mql from '@microlink/mql'

const { data } = await mql('https://kikobeats.com', {
  data: {
    avatar: {
      selector: "#avatar",
      type: "image",
      attr: "src"
    }
  }
})

The data extraction needs to be defined at least with a CSS selector.

Response structure

The extracted data will be part of the data payload in the response:

Rule properties

Each data rule accepts the following properties:

Property	Type	Description
selector	`string`	CSS selector to target the element
selectorAll	`string`	CSS selector to target multiple elements
attr	`string`	HTML attribute to extract (e.g., `href`, `src`)
type	`string`	Data type for validation (`string`, `number`, `date`, `image`, `url`, etc.)
evaluate	`function`	JavaScript function to transform the extracted value

Extracting multiple fields

You can extract multiple data fields in a single request:

import mql from '@microlink/mql'

const { data } = await mql('https://news.ycombinator.com', {
  data: {
    headline: {
      selector: ".titleline > a",
      attr: "text"
    },
    link: {
      selector: ".titleline > a",
      attr: "href",
      type: "url"
    },
    score: {
      selector: ".score",
      attr: "text"
    }
  }
})

Extract title, link, and score from Hacker News.

Extracting collections

Use selectorAll to extract multiple matching elements as an array:

import mql from '@microlink/mql'

const { data } = await mql('https://news.ycombinator.com', {
  data: {
    stories: {
      selectorAll: ".titleline > a",
      attr: "text"
    }
  }
})

Extract all story titles as an array.

Nested data extraction

For complex DOM structures, use nested rules to organize your data hierarchically:

import mql from '@microlink/mql'

const { data } = await mql('https://github.com/microlinkhq', {
  data: {
    repos: {
      selectorAll: ".repo",
      data: {
        name: {
          selector: "a",
          attr: "text"
        },
        description: {
          selector: "p",
          attr: "text"
        }
      }
    }
  }
})

Fallback values

Define fallback rules to ensure data extraction succeeds even when the primary selector fails:

import mql from '@microlink/mql'

const { data } = await mql('https://example.com', {
  data: {
    title: [
      {
        selector: 'meta[property="og:title"]',
        attr: "content"
      },
      {
        selector: "title",
        attr: "text"
      },
      {
        selector: "h1",
        attr: "text"
      }
    ]
  }
})

Try multiple selectors in order until one succeeds.

You can read the Microlink Query Language documentation to learn more about defining data extraction rules.

data

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Response structure

Rule properties

Extracting multiple fields

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Extracting collections

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Nested data extraction

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Fallback values

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