3 social-network extractors that work entirely without auth, using
public embed/preview endpoints + Instagram's own SEO-facing API:
- linkedin_post: /embed/feed/update/{urn} returns full body,
author, image, OG tags. Accepts both the urn:li:share
and urn:li:activity URN forms plus the pretty
/posts/{slug}-{id}-{suffix} URLs.
- instagram_post: /p/{shortcode}/embed/captioned/ returns the full
caption, username, thumbnail. Same endpoint serves
reels and IGTV, kind correctly classified.
- instagram_profile: /api/v1/users/web_profile_info/?username=X with the
x-ig-app-id header (Instagram's public web-app id,
sent by their own JS bundle). Returns the full
profile + the 12 most recent posts with shortcodes,
kinds, like/comment counts, thumbnails, and caption
previews. Falls back to OG-tag scraping of the
public HTML if the API ever 401/403s.
The IG profile output is shaped so callers can fan out cleanly:
for p in profile.recent_posts:
scrape('instagram_post', p.url)
giving you 'whole profile + every recent post' in one loop. End-to-end
tested against ticketswave: 1 profile call + 12 post calls in ~3.5s.
Pagination beyond 12 posts requires authenticated cookies and is left
for the cloud where we can stash a session.
Infrastructure change: added FetchClient::fetch_with_headers so
extractors can satisfy site-specific request headers (here x-ig-app-id;
later github_pr will use this for Authorization, etc.) without polluting
the global FetchConfig.headers map. Same retry semantics as fetch().
Catalog now exposes 17 extractors via /v1/extractors. Total unit tests
across the module: 47 passing. Clippy clean. Fmt clean.
Live test on the maintainer's example URLs:
- LinkedIn post (urn:li:share:7452618582213144577): 'Orc Dev' / full body
/ shipper.club link / CDN image extracted in 250ms.
- Instagram post (DT-RICMjeK5): 835-char Slovak caption, ticketswave
username, thumbnail. 200ms.
- Instagram profile (ticketswave): 18,473 followers (exact, not
rounded), is_verified=True, is_business=True, biography with emojis,
12 recent posts with shortcodes + kinds + likes. 400ms.
Out of scope for this wave (require infra we don't have):
- linkedin_profile: returns 999 to all bot UAs, needs OAuth
- facebook_post / facebook_page: content is JS-loaded, needs cloud Chrome
- facebook_profile (personal): not publicly accessible by design
Adds 8 more vertical extractors using public JSON APIs. All hit
deterministic endpoints with no antibot risk. Live tests pass
against canonical URLs for each.
AI / ML ecosystem (3):
- crates_io \u2192 crates.io/api/v1/crates/{name}
- huggingface_dataset \u2192 huggingface.co/api/datasets/{path} (handles both
legacy /datasets/{name} and canonical {owner}/{name})
- arxiv \u2192 export.arxiv.org/api/query (Atom XML parsed by quick-xml)
Code / version control (2):
- github_pr \u2192 api.github.com/repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/{number}
- github_release \u2192 api.github.com/repos/{owner}/{repo}/releases/tags/{tag}
Infrastructure (1):
- docker_hub \u2192 hub.docker.com/v2/repositories/{namespace}/{name}
(official-image shorthand /_/nginx normalized to library/nginx)
Community / publishing (2):
- dev_to \u2192 dev.to/api/articles/{username}/{slug}
- stackoverflow \u2192 api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions/{id} + answers,
filter=withbody for rendered HTML, sort=votes for
consistent top-answers ordering
Live test results (real URLs):
- serde: 942M downloads, 838B response
- 'Attention Is All You Need': abstract + authors, 1.8KB
- nginx official: 12.9B pulls, 21k stars, 17KB
- openai/gsm8k: 822k downloads, 1.7KB
- rust-lang/rust#138000: merged by RalfJung, +3/-2, 1KB
- webclaw v0.4.0: 2.4KB
- a real dev.to article: 2.2KB body, 3.1KB total
- python yield Q&A: score 13133, 51 answers, 104KB
Catalog now exposes 14 extractors via GET /v1/extractors. Total
unit tests across the module: 34 passing. Clippy clean. Fmt clean.
Marketing positioning sharpens: 14 dedicated extractors, all
deterministic, all 1-credit-per-call. Firecrawl's /extract is
5 credits per call and you write the schema yourself.
New extractors module returns site-specific typed JSON instead of
generic markdown. Each extractor:
- declares a URL pattern via matches()
- fetches from the site's official JSON API where one exists
- returns a typed serde_json::Value with documented field names
- exposes an INFO struct that powers the /v1/extractors catalog
First 6 verticals shipped, all hitting public JSON APIs (no HTML
scraping, zero antibot risk):
- reddit → www.reddit.com/*/.json
- hackernews → hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/{id} (full thread in one call)
- github_repo → api.github.com/repos/{owner}/{repo}
- pypi → pypi.org/pypi/{name}/json
- npm → registry.npmjs.org/{name} + downloads/point/last-week
- huggingface_model → huggingface.co/api/models/{owner}/{name}
Server-side routes added:
- POST /v1/scrape/{vertical} explicit per-vertical extraction
- GET /v1/extractors catalog (name, label, description, url_patterns)
The dispatcher validates that URL matches the requested vertical
before running, so users get "URL doesn't match the X extractor"
instead of opaque parse failures inside the extractor.
17 unit tests cover URL matching + path parsing for each vertical.
Live tests against canonical URLs (rust-lang/rust, requests pypi,
react npm, whisper-large-v3 hf, item 8863 hn, an r/micro_saas post)
all return correct typed JSON in 100-300ms. Sample sizes: github
863B, npm 700B, pypi 1.7KB, hf 3.2KB, hn 38KB (full comment tree).
Marketing positioning: Firecrawl charges 5 credits per /extract call
and you write the schema. Webclaw returns the same JSON in 1 credit
per /scrape/{vertical} call with hand-written deterministic
extractors per site.
