Installation

To install the Firecrawl Node SDK, you can use npm:

npm install @mendable/firecrawl-js

Usage

  1. Get an API key from firecrawl.dev
  2. Set the API key as an environment variable named FIRECRAWL_API_KEY or pass it as a parameter to the FirecrawlApp class.

Here’s an example of how to use the SDK with error handling:

  import FirecrawlApp from '@mendable/firecrawl-js';

  async function main() {
    try {
      // Initialize the FirecrawlApp with your API key
      const app = new FirecrawlApp({ apiKey: "YOUR_API_KEY" });

      // Scrape a single URL
      const url = 'https://mendable.ai';
      const scrapedData = await app.scrapeUrl(url);
      console.log(scrapedData);
      
      // Crawl a website
      const crawlUrl = 'https://mendable.ai';
      const params = {
      crawlerOptions: {
        excludes: ['blog/'],
        includes: [], // leave empty for all pages 
        limit: 1000,
        },
        pageOptions: {
            onlyMainContent: true
        }
      };

      const crawlResult = await app.crawlUrl(crawlUrl, params);
      console.log(crawlResult);

    } catch (error) {
      console.error('An error occurred:', error.message);
    }
  }

  main();

Scraping a URL

To scrape a single URL with error handling, use the scrapeUrl method. It takes the URL as a parameter and returns the scraped data as a dictionary.

  async function scrapeExample() {
    try {
      const url = 'https://example.com';
      const scrapedData = await app.scrapeUrl(url);
      console.log(scrapedData);

    } catch (error) {
      console.error(
        'Error occurred while scraping:',
        error.message
      );
    }
  }
  
  scrapeExample();

Crawling a Website

To crawl a website with error handling, use the crawlUrl method. It takes the starting URL and optional parameters as arguments. The params argument allows you to specify additional options for the crawl job, such as the maximum number of pages to crawl, allowed domains, and the output format.

async function crawlExample() {
  try {
    const crawlUrl = 'https://example.com';
    const params = {
      crawlerOptions: {
        excludes: ['blog/'],
        includes: [], // leave empty for all pages
        limit: 1000,
      },
      pageOptions: {
        onlyMainContent: true
      }
    };
    const waitUntilDone = true;
    const timeout = 5;
    const crawlResult = await app.crawlUrl(
      crawlUrl,
      params,
      waitUntilDone,
      timeout
    );

    console.log(crawlResult);

  } catch (error) {
    console.error(
      'Error occurred while crawling:',
      error.message
    );
  }
}

crawlExample();

Checking Crawl Status

To check the status of a crawl job with error handling, use the checkCrawlStatus method. It takes the job ID as a parameter and returns the current status of the crawl job.

async function checkStatusExample(jobId) {
  try {
    const status = await app.checkCrawlStatus(jobId);
    console.log(status);

  } catch (error) {
    console.error(
      'Error occurred while checking crawl status:',
      error.message
    );
  }
}
// Example usage, assuming you have a jobId
checkStatusExample('your_job_id_here');

Extracting structured data from a URL

With LLM extraction, you can easily extract structured data from any URL. We support zod schema to make it easier for you too. Here is how you to use it:

import FirecrawlApp from "@mendable/firecrawl-js";
import { z } from "zod";

const app = new FirecrawlApp({
  apiKey: "fc-YOUR_API_KEY",
});

// Define schema to extract contents into
const schema = z.object({
  top: z
    .array(
      z.object({
        title: z.string(),
        points: z.number(),
        by: z.string(),
        commentsURL: z.string(),
      })
    )
    .length(5)
    .describe("Top 5 stories on Hacker News"),
});

const scrapeResult = await app.scrapeUrl("https://firecrawl.dev", {
  extractorOptions: { extractionSchema: schema },
});

console.log(scrapeResult.data["llm_extraction"]);

Search for a query

With the search method, you can search for a query in a search engine and get the top results along with the page content for each result. The method takes the query as a parameter and returns the search results.

  async function searchExample() {
    try {
      const query = 'what is mendable?';
      const searchResults = await app.search(query, {
        pageOptions: {
          fetchPageContent: true // Fetch the page content for each search result
        }
      });

    } catch (error) {
      console.error(
        'Error occurred while scraping:',
        error.message
      );
    }
  }
  searchExample();

Error Handling

The SDK handles errors returned by the Firecrawl API and raises appropriate exceptions. If an error occurs during a request, an exception will be raised with a descriptive error message. The examples above demonstrate how to handle these errors using try/catch blocks.