Firecrawl hello world

Firecrawl Hello World

Overview

Four minimal examples covering Firecrawl's core endpoints: scrape (single page), crawl (multi-page), map (URL discovery), and extract (LLM structured data). Each is a standalone snippet you can run immediately.

Prerequisites

• @mendable/firecrawl-js installed (npm install @mendable/firecrawl-js)
• FIRECRAWL_API_KEY environment variable set

Instructions

Step 1: Single-Page Scrape

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

const firecrawl = new FirecrawlApp({
  apiKey: process.env.FIRECRAWL_API_KEY!,
});

// Scrape one page — returns markdown, HTML, metadata, links
const result = await firecrawl.scrapeUrl("https://docs.firecrawl.dev", {
  formats: ["markdown"],
});

console.log("Title:", result.metadata?.title);
console.log("Markdown:", result.markdown?.substring(0, 500));

Step 2: Multi-Page Crawl

// Crawl a site recursively — follows links, respects robots.txt
const crawlResult = await firecrawl.crawlUrl("https://docs.firecrawl.dev", {
  limit: 10,  // max 10 pages (saves credits)
  scrapeOptions: {
    formats: ["markdown"],
  },
});

console.log(`Crawled ${crawlResult.data?.length} pages`);
for (const page of crawlResult.data || []) {
  console.log(`  ${page.metadata?.title} — ${page.metadata?.sourceURL}`);
}

Step 3: Map a Site (URL Discovery)

// Discover all URLs on a site in ~2-3 seconds (uses sitemap + SERP)
const mapResult = await firecrawl.mapUrl("https://docs.firecrawl.dev");

console.log(`Found ${mapResult.links?.length} URLs`);
mapResult.links?.slice(0, 10).forEach(url => console.log(`  ${url}`));

Step 4: LLM Extract (Structured Data)

// Extract structured data from a page using an LLM + JSON schema
const extracted = await firecrawl.scrapeUrl("https://firecrawl.dev/pricing", {
  formats: ["extract"],
  extract: {
    schema: {
      type: "object",
      properties: {
        plans: {
          type: "array",
          items: {
            type: "object",
            properties: {
              name: { type: "string" },
              price: { type: "string" },
              credits: { type: "number" },
            },
          },
        },
      },
    },
  },
});

console.log("Pricing plans:", JSON.stringify(extracted.extract, null, 2));

Output

• Single-page markdown scraped from a live URL
• Multi-page crawl results with titles and source URLs
• Site map with all discovered URLs
• Structured JSON extracted by LLM from page content

Error Handling

Error	Cause	Solution
Cannot find module	SDK not installed	npm install @mendable/firecrawl-js
401 Unauthorized	Missing or invalid API key	Check FIRECRAWL_API_KEY env var
429 Too Many Requests	Rate limit exceeded	Wait and retry with backoff
Empty markdown	JS-heavy page not rendered	Add waitFor: 5000 to scrape options
402 Payment Required	Credits exhausted	Check balance at firecrawl.dev/app

Examples

Python Hello World

from firecrawl import FirecrawlApp

firecrawl = FirecrawlApp(api_key="fc-YOUR_API_KEY")

# Scrape
result = firecrawl.scrape_url("https://example.com", params={
    "formats": ["markdown"]
})
print(result["markdown"][:500])

# Map
urls = firecrawl.map_url("https://example.com")
print(f"Found {len(urls.get('links', []))} URLs")

Batch Scrape Multiple URLs

// Scrape many URLs at once — more efficient than individual scrapes
const batchResult = await firecrawl.batchScrapeUrls(
  [
    "https://docs.firecrawl.dev/features/scrape",
    "https://docs.firecrawl.dev/features/crawl",
    "https://docs.firecrawl.dev/features/extract",
  ],
  { formats: ["markdown"] }
);

for (const page of batchResult.data || []) {
  console.log(`${page.metadata?.title}: ${page.markdown?.length} chars`);
}

Resources

• Firecrawl Quickstart
• Scrape Endpoint
• Crawl Endpoint
• Map Endpoint
• Extract (JSON Mode)

Next Steps

Proceed to firecrawl-local-dev-loop for development workflow setup.