Microlink API: Browser automation

A web browser is one of the most complex pieces of software, with some internal sub-systems that work together for resolving any kind of URL on the Internet, even if the content was written with HTML tables in 1992.

Microlink API is a service that provides a high-level API to control a browser instance in the simplest way possible, where the different features can be enabled or disabled using query parameters.

When we started the service, just a few things could be done. Now, we're supporting +30 query parameters.

Just url is the only parameter that needs to be specified, but also any of the following query parameters:

Data

Enrich the response payload detecting data from the target URL.

• audio: enables audio source detection from the target URL.
• data: gets specific content extraction from the target URL.
• iframe: gets, if it's possible, the embedded representation of the target URL.
• insights: gets lighthouse perfomance metrics from the target URL.
• meta: gets unified medata from the target URL.
• palette: gets color information over any image present on the response data.
• pdf: gets a PDF over the target URL.
• screenshot: takes a screenshot over the target URL.
• video: enables video source detection from the target URL.

Browser

Tell the browser to act in a certain way or perform some tasks.

• adblock: enable/disable adblock over abusive third-party content over the browser page.
• animations: enable/disable CSS animations and transitions into the browser page.
• click: clicks DOM elements matching the given CSS selectors.
• device: emulates an specific device (viewport, user agent, dimensions, etc).
• hide: sets visibility: hidden on the matched elements.
• javascript: enable/disable the javascript engine on the entire browser page.
• mediaType: changes the CSS media type of the page.
• modules: injects <script type="module"> into the browser page.
• prerender: enable/disable browser navigation.
• proxy: uses a proxy server as an intermediary during the requests.
• remove: sets display: none on the matched elements.
• scripts: injects <script> into the browser page.
• scrollTo: scrolls to the DOM element matching the given CSS selector.
• styles: injects <style> into the browser page.
• viewport: establishes a set of properties related with the browser visible area.
• waitFor: waits a quantity of time or selector before processing the content of the browser page.
• waitUntil: ensures to wait browser event(s) before considering navigation succeeded.

Response

Apply some modifications over the response data for better accommodation.

• embed: embed a specific response data field respecting the content type.
• filter: filters a list of properties from the response data for bandwidth saving.
• force: forces a new fresh response data bypassing the cache layer.
• headers: customizes requests using custom HTTP headers.
• ttl: configures the cache layer specifying the time to live.