microlink.io: Introducing Custom Rules

Hello, everyone

I'm writing this post after launched microlink.io months ago.

This is our first important product iteration based on the feedback received (very appreciated 👏).

We always associated microlink with a powerful API for extracting data. We created links previews as one of the possible use cases (actually our SDK), but because the API response returns generic data, it's a bit difficult use microlink API for different problems scope.

Now, we are introducing the concept of Custom Rules: The ability to setup custom API response based on user necessities.

Custom Rules work specifying what you want to get using CSS selectors. Also, you can provide consistent types (url, author, date, etc) avoiding getting unexpected value in your data.

In other words, you can use it as a scraper as service 🤯

The blog post shows you how to use Custom Rules, taking an Instagram profile as an example.

I hope you find it interesting and again, any feedback is welcome 🙂