Web Scraping

Web Scraping with mq

Three tools — pick the smallest one that fits:

• mq-crawl — fetch/crawl a URL to Markdown, with JS rendering, multi-page crawling, robots.txt handling.
• mq — filter/transform Markdown or HTML (-I html) with jq-like selectors. Full selector/function reference: processing-markdown skill.
• mq's http() builtin (--allow-net) — make the request inside a query, for cases mq-crawl can't (POST, custom headers/auth).

mq-crawl sends logs/stats to stderr — redirect with 2>/dev/null when scripting.

Fetch & Extract

mq-crawl --depth 0 https://example.com 2>/dev/null                       # page as Markdown (--depth 0 = don't follow links)
mq-crawl --depth 0 -q '.h | to_text()' https://example.com 2>/dev/null   # inline query, e.g. an outline

-q output is always Markdown/plain text, regardless of -f (which only formats the stats block on stderr, not content). For JSON/table/grep, skip -q and pipe the page into mq instead:

mq-crawl --depth 0 https://example.com 2>/dev/null | mq -F json 'select(.link)'                            # structured rows
mq-crawl --depth 0 https://example.com 2>/dev/null | mq -F json '.[][]'                                     # table cells
mq-crawl --depth 0 https://example.com 2>/dev/null | mq -F grep --context 2 'select(contains("Pricing"))'   # locate text

Filter with select(...) like jq: select(.h.level <= 2), select(.code.lang == "js"), select(contains("keyword")).

JS-Rendered Pages & Multi-Page Crawls

mq-crawl --depth 0 --headless --headless-network-idle https://spa.example.com 2>/dev/null

mq-crawl https://docs.example.com --depth 2 --allowed-domains docs.example.com \
  --concurrency 4 -o ./crawled 2>/dev/null

• --headless needs local Chrome (or --webdriver-url for a remote WebDriver).
• --allowed-domains is an exact-match domain list, not a wildcard — list every subdomain you want crawled.
• -o DIR saves one Markdown file per page instead of stdout; aggregate them with mq -I null --allow-read 'collection("./crawled") | map(self, fn(page): get(page, "title");)' /dev/null (collection reads from disk, so it requires --allow-read).

In-Query HTTP (--allow-net)

For POST/custom headers, or to keep fetch+extract in a single query:

mq --allow-net -I null 'http("get", "https://example.com")' /dev/null
mq --allow-net -I null 'http("post", "https://api.example.com/submit", "field=value")' /dev/null

http(method, url, body?, headers?) — headers is a dict, e.g. set(dict(), "Authorization", "Bearer …"). HTTPS-only; loopback/private/link-local addresses are always blocked. Errors unless --allow-net is passed. (--allow-write is the equivalent gate for write_file().)

To extract from the response, pipe through from_html() — its result is a single Array, so selectors like .link/.h map element-wise and leave nulls for non-matches instead of dropping them. Use compact_map() with an explicit-arg accessor (get_url(), to_text(), attr()) instead:

mq --allow-net -I null -F json 'http("get", "https://example.com") | from_html(self) | compact_map(self, fn(n): get_url(n);)' /dev/null

Prefer mq-crawl for plain page-reading (JS rendering, crawling, robots.txt come free); reach for http() only when mq-crawl can't make the request you need.

Already Have HTML?

curl -s https://example.com | mq -I html '.h | to_text()'
curl -s https://example.com | mq -I html 'select(.link) | .link.url'

-I html converts to Markdown first — use Markdown selectors (.link, .h, .text), not HTML tags. Container elements (div/span/section) and their class/id/data-* attributes are discarded in that conversion.

To query the raw HTML directly instead — e.g. .price divs, a.download[href], attribute-driven card UIs — use the css()/css_text()/css_attr() builtins on the pre-conversion HTML string (needs the CLI built with the css-selector feature, on by default):

curl -s https://example.com | mq -I text 'css_text(self, ".price")'                 # text of every .price match
curl -s https://example.com | mq -I text 'css_attr(self, "a.download", "href")'     # href of every a.download match
curl -s https://example.com | mq -I text 'css(self, ".card") | map(self, fn(card): css_text(card, ".card-title") | get(0);)'  # filter by selector, then extract from each match

css_attr returns null for elements missing that attribute instead of dropping them, so array positions line up across parallel css_* calls.

Limitations

• No HTTP status/headers/timing from mq/mq-crawl — use curl -sI / curl -w for that.
• For JSON/XML APIs, skip mq-crawl: curl -s <url> | mq -I json '...'.
• Cap output size with --limit N / --skip N, or pipe through head.

Run mq-crawl --help / mq --help for full flag lists.