Broken Links Checker

Apify Actor that audits a website for broken links, validates fragment anchors, and produces both a dataset and an HTML report.

What this Actor does

• Crawls the provided baseUrl and optionally matching subdomains.
• Detects broken links, invalid fragments, and crawled-vs-uncrawled targets.
• Saves a structured HTML report in the default Key-Value Store.
• Saves dataset items for exports and downstream automation.
• Can send email notifications when broken links are found.

Apify Console usage

1. Open the Actor in Apify Console.
2. Set baseUrl to a valid http:// or https:// URL.
3. Adjust maxPages, maxConcurrency, and requestDelayMs to fit the site.
4. Keep proxyConfiguration enabled if you want Apify Proxy.
5. Run a tiny smoke input first, then scale up.

Runtime notes

• The Actor prefers a system Chromium binary when Apify provides one, and falls back to the bundled Puppeteer browser behavior when needed.
• Invalid proxy credentials are logged and the crawl continues without proxy.
• Email notifications are best-effort: failure is logged, but the crawl still succeeds.

Recommended smoke input

{
  "baseUrl": "https://example.com",
  "crawlSubdomains": false,
  "maxConcurrency": 1,
  "maxPages": 1,
  "requestDelayMs": 0,
  "saveOnlyBrokenLinks": true,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": []
  }
}

Input reference

Field	Type	Default	Notes
baseUrl	string	required	Starting URL for the crawl
crawlSubdomains	boolean	false	Crawl matching subdomains
maxConcurrency	integer	10	Parallel browser pages
maxPages	integer	10	Max requests per crawl
requestDelayMs	integer	1500	Delay between page opens
notificationEmails	string[]	[]	Email recipients for broken-link alerts
saveOnlyBrokenLinks	boolean	true	Store only broken links in the dataset
proxyConfiguration	object	{ useApifyProxy: true, apifyProxyGroups: [] }	Standard Apify proxy config

Output

• OUTPUT.json in Key-Value Store
• OUTPUT.html in Key-Value Store
• Dataset items for broken links or full crawl diagnostics

Troubleshooting

• Input validation failed: ensure baseUrl includes the protocol and numeric fields are integers.
• Proxy warnings: missing permissions or bad proxy configuration are logged and the run continues.
• Browser launch issues: the Actor now resolves a usable browser path from the container when possible; if a run still fails, inspect the build logs and container image path first.
• Email not delivered: notification failures are logged and do not fail the crawl.

Local development

npm install
npm test
npx --yes apify-cli run --input-file input.json

Verification notes

• Keep runs small for smoke tests.
• Re-run the actor remotely after changes using a non-latest build tag.
• Inspect both logs and dataset output before treating a fix as done.

Support

• Apify: https://apify.com
• Quick Life Solutions: https://quicklifesolutions.com