Tiktok Url Expander

TikTok (and generic) URL Expander

Expand shortened or redirecting URLs (especially TikTok short links like https://vm.tiktok.com/...) and obtain the final resolved URL together with the full redirect chain.

Each processed URL becomes one dataset item containing:

{
    "originalUrl": "https://vm.tiktok.com/example/",
    "finalUrl": "https://www.tiktok.com/@user/video/1234567890",
    "redirectChain": [
        "https://www.tiktok.com/?_r=1",
        "https://www.tiktok.com/@user/video/1234567890"
    ],
    "totalRedirects": 2,
    "durationMillis": 742
}

An OUTPUT record in the key-value store includes a summary with the dataset ID and count.

Included features

• Apify SDK for Actor runtime helpers
• Input schema supporting single URL (url) or multiple URLs (urlsText as newline-separated)
• Dataset output for structured results
• Manual redirect handling (HEAD first, GET fallback) to log every hop
• Configurable maxRedirects, timeoutMillis, optional custom userAgent

How it works

1. Reads url or urlsText from input.
2. For each URL performs a HEAD request with redirects disabled.
3. On 3xx + Location: resolve to absolute URL, append to chain, repeat.
4. If HEAD not allowed / errors (405 / 501 etc.), retries with GET.
5. Stops when non-redirect status or maxRedirects hit.
6. Stores result object and logs progress.

Input schema

Either url OR urlsText must be provided.

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
url	string	conditional	-	Single URL to expand
urlsText	string	conditional	-	Multiple URLs to expand (one per line)
maxRedirects	integer	no	10	Safety cap on redirect depth
timeoutMillis	integer	no	15000	Per-request timeout in ms
userAgent	string	no	desktop UA	Override User-Agent

Example (single URL)

{ "url": "https://vm.tiktok.com/example1/" }

Example (multiple URLs)

{
    "urlsText": "https://vm.tiktok.com/example1/\nhttps://vm.tiktok.com/example2/",
    "maxRedirects": 10,
    "timeoutMillis": 15000
}

Output

Dataset (default) items: one per input URL.

Retrieve via API:

https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/<DATASET_ID>/items?format=json

Key-value store: OUTPUT summary object.

Local development

Install dependencies:

$npm install

Run in dev (TypeScript on-the-fly):

$npm run start:dev

Build & run production JS:

$npm run build && npm run start:prod

Deploy to Apify

Login (if needed) then push:

apify login
apify push

Documentation reference

• Apify SDK (JS)
• Apify Platform docs
• Discord community