Rails

Use Firecrawl with Ruby on Rails to search, scrape, and interact with web data using the REST API.

Prerequisites

• Ruby 3.0+ and Rails 7+
• A Firecrawl API key — get one free

Configuration

Add your API key to your Rails credentials or environment:

export FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=fc-YOUR-API-KEY

Create a service

Create app/services/firecrawl_service.rb:

require "net/http"
require "json"
require "uri"

class FirecrawlService
  BASE_URL = "https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2"

  def initialize(api_key: ENV.fetch("FIRECRAWL_API_KEY"))
    @api_key = api_key
  end

  def search(query, limit: 5)
    post("/search", { query: query, limit: limit })
  end

  def scrape(url, **options)
    post("/scrape", { url: url }.merge(options))
  end

  def interact(url, prompt, follow_up: nil)
    # 1. Scrape to open a browser session
    scrape_result = scrape(url, formats: ["markdown"])
    scrape_id = scrape_result.dig("data", "metadata", "scrapeId")

    # 2. Send first prompt
    post("/scrape/#{scrape_id}/interact", { prompt: prompt })

    # 3. Send follow-up prompt
    result = nil
    if follow_up
      result = post("/scrape/#{scrape_id}/interact", { prompt: follow_up })
    end

    # 4. Close the session
    delete("/scrape/#{scrape_id}/interact")

    result || scrape_result
  end

  private

  def post(endpoint, payload)
    uri = URI("#{BASE_URL}#{endpoint}")
    request = Net::HTTP::Post.new(uri)
    request["Authorization"] = "Bearer #{@api_key}"
    request["Content-Type"] = "application/json"
    request.body = payload.to_json

    response = Net::HTTP.start(uri.hostname, uri.port, use_ssl: true) do |http|
      http.request(request)
    end

    JSON.parse(response.body)
  end

  def delete(endpoint)
    uri = URI("#{BASE_URL}#{endpoint}")
    request = Net::HTTP::Delete.new(uri)
    request["Authorization"] = "Bearer #{@api_key}"

    Net::HTTP.start(uri.hostname, uri.port, use_ssl: true) do |http|
      http.request(request)
    end
  end
end

Create a controller

Generate a controller:

rails generate controller Firecrawl search scrape interact --skip-routes

Edit app/controllers/firecrawl_controller.rb:

class FirecrawlController < ApplicationController
  skip_before_action :verify_authenticity_token

  def search
    service = FirecrawlService.new
    result = service.search(params.require(:query), limit: params.fetch(:limit, 5).to_i)
    render json: result
  end

  def scrape
    service = FirecrawlService.new
    result = service.scrape(params.require(:url))
    render json: result
  end

  def interact
    service = FirecrawlService.new
    result = service.interact(
      params.require(:url),
      params.require(:prompt),
      follow_up: params[:followUp]
    )
    render json: result
  end
end

Add routes

In config/routes.rb:

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  post "api/search", to: "firecrawl#search"
  post "api/scrape", to: "firecrawl#scrape"
  post "api/interact", to: "firecrawl#interact"
end

Test it

rails server

# Search the web
curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/api/search \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "firecrawl web scraping"}'

# Scrape a page
curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/api/scrape \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com"}'

# Interact with a page
curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/api/interact \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://www.amazon.com", "prompt": "Search for iPhone 16 Pro Max", "followUp": "Click on the first result and tell me the price"}'

Next steps

Search docs

Search the web and get full page content

Scrape docs

All scrape options including formats, actions, and proxies

Interact docs

Click, fill forms, and extract dynamic content

API Reference

Complete REST API documentation