Daily Mirror Scraper

Extract full article text or the newest headlines from Daily Mirror (dailymirror.lk), Sri Lanka's leading English-language daily — no account or subscription needed.

Why use this actor

• No account or login required — fully free, ad-supported site with no paywall
• Full article text included, not a summary — headline, description, byline, publish/modified dates, lead image, and the complete article body
• Also fetches the newest headlines straight from the site's Breaking News section without visiting each article individually
• Stable JSON output suitable for pipelines, spreadsheets, or databases
• Automatic retries on temporary network hiccups
• Correctly detects Daily Mirror's soft-404 pages (the site always answers HTTP 200, even for a removed or non-existent article) instead of returning a blank or broken record

How it works

1. Give the actor one or more article URLs, or switch to "latest" mode to get the newest stories automatically.
2. In article mode, the actor opens each URL and pulls out the full text and every publicly available detail about the story.
3. In latest mode, the actor reads Daily Mirror's own Breaking News listing and returns the newest stories.
4. Results stream into your dataset, ready to download as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

You don't need to manage retries, rate limits, or figure out the site's internal data format — the actor handles all of that.

Input

Article mode (default):

{
  "mode": "article",
  "urls": [
    "https://www.dailymirror.lk/breaking-news/Cabinet-approves-Rs-104-9-bn-central-expressway-road-project/108-348843"
  ],
  "maxConcurrency": 4,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Latest headlines mode:

{
  "mode": "latest",
  "limit": 10,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Field	Type	Description
mode	string	"article" (default) — extract one or more article URLs. "latest" — fetch the newest headlines.
url	string	A single article URL. Used in article mode.
urls	array	Multiple article URLs to extract in one run. Used in article mode.
limit	integer	Max headlines returned in latest mode. Default 10, max 50.
maxConcurrency	integer	How many articles to fetch in parallel in article mode. Default 4.
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy settings. Residential is on by default.

Output

Article mode — one record per URL. Real output from a local test run:

{
  "_input": "https://www.dailymirror.lk/breaking-news/Cabinet-approves-Rs-104-9-bn-central-expressway-road-project/108-348843",
  "_source": "S1-jsonld",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-08-26T00:57:48Z",
  "articleId": "348843",
  "categoryId": "108",
  "category": "breaking-news",
  "headline": "Cabinet approves Rs. 104.9 bn central expressway road project",
  "description": "The Cabinet has approved a proposal to develop connecting roads linking Sections I, III and IV of the Central Expressway with the existing road network in the Western, Central and North-Western provinces.",
  "articleBody": "Colombo, Aug. 25 (Daily Mirror) - The Cabinet has approved a proposal to develop connecting roads linking Sections I, III and IV of the Central Expressway with the existing road network in the Western, Central and North-Western provinces.\n\nThe project is aimed at improving connectivity, accessibility and traffic flow between the Central Expressway and the existing road network.\n\n... 4 more paragraphs",
  "author": "CHATURANGA PRADEEP SAMARAWICKRAMA",
  "datePublished": "2026-08-25T13:46:00+05:30",
  "dateModified": "2026-08-25T13:46:00+05:30",
  "image": {
    "@type": "ImageObject",
    "url": "assets/uploads/image_a177e06553.jpeg",
    "width": "200",
    "height": "200"
  }
}

A record where the site has no author byline (many pieces credit the generic desk instead of a named reporter) and no lead image:

{
  "headline": "38 Years. ’One unforgettable team’",
  "author": "DM Editorial",
  "category": "sports",
  "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "none", "width": "200", "height": "200" }
}

A URL that doesn't correspond to a real article — Daily Mirror always answers HTTP 200, even for a removed or fabricated article ID, so this is detected from the page content, not the status code:

{
  "_input": "https://www.dailymirror.lk/breaking-news/this-article-does-not-exist-zzz/108-99999999",
  "_source": "none",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-08-26T00:57:48Z",
  "_error": "not_found",
  "_errorDetail": ""
}

Latest headlines mode — one record per headline. Real output from a local test run:

{
  "_input": "latest",
  "_source": "S2-html-listing",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-08-26T00:56:15Z",
  "articleId": "348860",
  "categoryId": "108",
  "category": "breaking-news",
  "title": "Parliament Committee seeks Police Proposals to Ease Prison Overcrowding",
  "link": "https://www.dailymirror.lk/breaking-news/Parliament-Committee-seeks-Police-Proposals-to-Ease-Prison-Overcrowding/108-348860"
}

Field	Type	Description
_input	string	The URL you requested, or "latest", for traceability.
_source	string	Which strategy produced this record (S1-jsonld for articles, S2-html-listing for latest headlines).
_scrapedAt	string	UTC timestamp of when the record was captured.
articleId	string	Internal numeric Daily Mirror article ID, from the URL's trailing digits.
categoryId	string	Internal numeric Daily Mirror category/section ID from the URL.
category	string	URL path segment identifying the section (e.g. breaking-news, sports, school_rugby).
headline / title	string	Article headline.
description	string	Short summary (article mode only).
articleBody	string	Full plain-text article content (article mode only).
author	string	Byline name — a specific reporter's name, or the generic "DM Editorial" on many pieces.
datePublished / dateModified	string	ISO-8601 timestamps (article mode only).
image	object	Lead image (article mode only). url is the literal string "none" when the article has no lead image.
link	string	Article URL (latest mode).

A record with _error instead of article fields means that URL could not be processed (for example, "_error": "not_found" for a removed or non-existent article — Daily Mirror never returns a real HTTP 404).