link-preview-generator

Get preview data (a title, description, image, domain name) from a url. Library uses puppeteer headless browser to scrape the web site.

BLOG POST and DEMO

Install

$ npm install link-preview-generator

Usage

const linkPreviewGenerator = require("link-preview-generator");

const previewData = await linkPreviewGenerator(
  "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mqqY2Ji7_g"
);
console.log(previewData);
/*
{
  title: 'Kiteboarding: Stylish Backroll in 4 Sessions - Ride with Blake: Vlog 20',
  description: 'The backroll is a staple in your kiteboarding trick ' +
    'bag. With a few small adjustments, you can really ' +
    'improve your style and make this basic your own. ' +
    'Sessio...',
  domain: 'youtube.com',
  img: 'https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8mqqY2Ji7_g/hqdefault.jpg',
  favicon: 'https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/d3411c39/img/favicon.ico'
}
*/

API

linkPreviewGenerator(url, puppeteerArgs?, puppeteerAgent?)

Accepts a url, which is scraped and optional parameters puppeteerArgs -- browser options and puppeteerAgent -- browser user agent.

Returns an object with preview data of url.

url

Type: string

Scraped url.

puppeteerArgs

Type: array

Options to set on the Chrome browser.

puppeteerAgent

Type: string

Specific user agent to use.

Troubleshooting

If you need to deploy this library (Puppeteer) on Heroku, follow these steps.

If you want to run this library from within a Docker container:

1. pass the following puppeteer arguments as second argument

// Required for Docker version of Puppeteer
'--no-sandbox',
'--disable-setuid-sandbox',
// This will write shared memory files into /tmp instead of /dev/shm,
// because Docker’s default for /dev/shm is 64MB
'--disable-dev-shm-usage'

2. make sure your Docker image has all needed dependencies for headless chrome or just go straight away with buildkite/puppeteer
3. done

License

MIT © Andrej Gajdos