Retrieving HTML metadata for image instead of downloading image

Question

I am trying to use Cheerio with the Node.js request library to retrieve metadata about images. It looks like when I make an HTTP GET request to an URL that ends in .jpg, .png, etc, it will send back the whole file and I can't access the HTML in the response. So, my question is, given a URL to an image, how do I read just the HTML or metadata instead of downloading the whole image file upon making a request to the URL?

For example, here is some simple code I have:

    var request = require('request');
    var cheerio = require('cheerio'); // cheerio is just used to parse HTML on the server, like jquery for the server


    request('http://l.yimg.com/os/mit/media/m/content_index/images/sidekick_tv_news-2e9c408.png',function(err,response,body){

        var $ = cheerio.load(body);

        //here it seems like the body is not HTML but all the data pertaining to the image itself - I just want the typical HTML response, not a picture file


        });

does anyone know what I am talking about?

I can't understand, you are requesting an image file what kind of HTML you are supposed to receive? — michelem, Oct 03 '15 at 06:55
You're requesting an image file so you're getting an image file. There is no html. — Lenny, Oct 03 '15 at 08:13
I want to get the html not just the image, so can I do that or not — Alexander Mills, Oct 03 '15 at 22:44
hey did you able to solve it , i have same problem and don't know how to solve it.. — redblood, Sep 22 '16 at 10:05
I think there is a better way to do this, let me ask a friend of mine — Alexander Mills, Sep 22 '16 at 17:50

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 03 '15 at 08:56

1

For starters you can use the image url in an img element:

var img = cheerio('<img src="' + imageUrl + '"></img>');

or

var img = cheerio.load('<img src="' + imageUrl + '"></img>');

Then you might be able to perform your queries

answered Oct 03 '15 at 08:56

Meir

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Retrieving HTML metadata for image instead of downloading image

1 Answers1