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Quick start

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Learn how to authenticate, run Actors, and retrieve results using the Apify API client for JavaScript.

Step 1: Authenticate the client

To use the client, you need an API token. You can find your token under Integrations tab in Apify Console. Copy the token and initialize the client by providing the token (MY-APIFY-TOKEN) as a parameter to the ApifyClient constructor.

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Client initialization with the API token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: 'MY-APIFY-TOKEN',
});
Secure access

The API token is used to authorize your requests to the Apify API. You can be charged for the usage of the underlying services, so do not share your API token with untrusted parties or expose it on the client side of your applications.

Step 2: Run an Actor

To start an Actor, call the client.actor() method with the Actor's ID (e.g. john-doe/my-cool-actor). The Actor's ID is a combination of the Actor owner's username and the Actor name. You can run both your own Actors and Actors from Apify Store.

To define the Actor's input, pass a JSON object to the call() method that matches the Actor's input schema. The input can include URLs to scrape, search terms, or other configuration data.

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'MY-APIFY-TOKEN' });

// Runs an Actor with an input and waits for it to finish.
const { defaultDatasetId } = await client.actor('username/actor-name').call({
    some: 'input',
});

Step 3: Get results from the dataset

To get the results from the dataset, call the client.dataset() method with the dataset ID, then call listItems() to retrieve the data. You can get the dataset ID from the Actor's run object (represented by defaultDatasetId).

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'MY-APIFY-TOKEN' });

// Runs an Actor and waits for it to finish
const { defaultDatasetId } = await client.actor('username/actor-name').call();

// Lists items from the Actor's dataset
const { items } = await client.dataset(defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);
Dataset access

Running an Actor might take time, depending on the Actor's complexity and the amount of data it processes. If you want only to get data and have an immediate response you should access the existing dataset of the finished Actor run.

Next steps

Concepts

To learn more about how the client works, check out the Concepts section in the sidebar:

Guides

For practical examples of common tasks, see Code examples.