Node link previwer

A lightweight Node.js library to fetch link metadata — title, description, and a highlighted image — suitable for building link previews (for example, in chat apps, social embeds, or content summaries).

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Table of Contents

• Features
• Install
• Usage
• API Reference
• Error Handling
• Edge Cases & Limitations
• Development
• Contributing
• License

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Features

• Parse HTML of any public web page to extract:
  • <title> tag
  • <meta name="description">
  • Open Graph image or other prominent images
• Simple callback‑based API
• Fast, minimal dependencies
• Works in Node.js environments

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Install

npm install @thiagofeijodev/node-link-previewer

or using Yarn:

yarn add @thiagofeijodev/node-link-previewer

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Usage

const LinkPreview = require('@thiagofeijodev/node-link-previewer');

LinkPreview.search('https://example.com', (data) => {
  console.log('Preview data:', data);
}, (err) => {
  console.error('Error fetching preview:', err);
});

Example output:

{
  title: 'Example Domain',
  description: 'This domain is for use in illustrative examples in documents.',
  img: 'https://example.com/images/example.png',
  link: 'https://example.com'
}

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API Reference

Method	Signature	Returns / Callback	Description
search(url, successCallback, errorCallback)	url (string), successCallback(data) function, errorCallback(error) function	Calls successCallback with an object: { title, description, img, link } on success; calls errorCallback if something goes wrong	Fetches and parses the given URL to extract metadata

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Error Handling

• Invalid or malformed URLs (e.g. missing protocol)
• Network issues (timeouts, DNS errors, unreachable host)
• Non‑HTML responses or pages without expected tags
• Pages with no images or where images are relative paths

Wrap in Promises if you prefer async/await usage.

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Edge Cases & Limitations

• Pages behind authentication will fail
• Dynamically loaded content via JavaScript is not supported
• Relative image URLs may need to be resolved manually
• Multiple images on a page — first or OG image is chosen

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Development

1. Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/thiagofeijodev/node-link-previewer.git
cd node-link-previewer

2. Install dependencies:

npm install

3. Run tests (when available):

npm test

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Contributing

• Fork the repo & create a feature branch
• Write tests for new behavior
• Maintain consistent code style
• Open a pull request with clear description of changes

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License

MIT License — see LICENSE for details.