Actions

When making a Browser Request you can specify a list of actions you wish for us to carry out on the requested web page. These actions conform to the following format:

{
    "type": "", //the type of the action
    //other params follow as key value pairs
    "key": value //string, number etc. 
}

Universal Parameters

All actions have the following parameters:

Name	Type	Required	Description
type	string		The type name of the action.
continue_on_fail	boolean		Should execution of further actions continue or throw an error if this action fails. Default: true
customId	string		A customId to help you find the action in the response. Default: null

Action Execution

Actions are carried out in the order they are submitted. Every action type has a continue_on_fail parameter which, if set to false will cause execution to finish if any action failed. Setting this to true ensures that all actions are carried out.

Custom Id

As shown above, you can submit a customId with each action you submit to the API. We'll include this Id in the outputs from the browser request so you can find a certain action's output and/or status easily in the response.

Response Format

When a browser request has completed, information on an action's execution

{
    "id": "", //a unique id given to the action by Gaffa
    "type": "capture_screenshot", //the type of the action
    "query": "", //a representation of the action in querystring format
    "timestamp": "", //the UTC timestamp the action was executed
    "output": "" //if the action has an output you will find a url for this here,
    "error": "" //if the requesst fails the error message will be returned here
}

Supported Actions

The Gaffa API supports the following actions detailed below. Click the "read more" buttons to read more information about each type.

Actions without outputs

Type	Description	Read More
click	Click on a given element	Click
scroll	Scroll to a particular point on the page or, in the case of pages with infinite scrolling, scroll until a given time has elapsed.	Scroll
type	Type the provided text into a given element	Type
wait	Wait for a given time to elapse or an element to appear on page before proceeding to the next action.	Wait

Actions with outputs

Type	Description	Read More
capture_dom	Export the raw DOM page data	DOM
capture_screenshot	Capture a screenshot of the web page	Screenshot
generate_markdown	Convert the page into markdown	Markdown
generate_simplified_dom	Generate a simplified version of the DOM	Simplified DOM
capture_snapshot	Create a completely static version of the web page which can be accessed offline	Snapshot
print	Print the web page to a PDF	Print