Convert a URL to Markdown in Python and Preserve Source Structure

Converting a URL to Markdown is useful when the returned text preserves the content your application needs. Keep the source URL and access time with the output, then inspect headings, tables and code before chunking it. A smaller string is not automatically a better source.

Make a fresh conversion request

import os
import requests

url = "https://example.org/permitted-article"
response = requests.post(
    "https://www.searchcans.com/api/v1/url",
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer " + os.environ["SEARCHCANS_API_KEY"]},
    json={"t": "url", "s": url, "mode": 0, "maxCache": 0, "d": 30000},
    timeout=40,
)
response.raise_for_status()
body = response.json()
if body.get("code") != 0 or not isinstance(body.get("data"), dict):
    raise RuntimeError("Reader did not return a successful data object")
markdown = body["data"].get("markdown")
if not isinstance(markdown, str) or not markdown.strip():
    raise ValueError("No usable Markdown returned")
print(markdown)

The URL above is a placeholder; replace it with a source you are permitted to read. This example does not make an arbitrary example URL into a guaranteed live page. Browser-rendered content has a separate mode and completeness check.

Check structure against the source

Do not turn conversion into an accuracy claim

The owned HTML fixture used for this revision retained the required article text, table and code in the candidate Markdown. It is one controlled example, not a whole-web benchmark. If token cost matters, measure both outputs with the tokenizer used by your model and check whether useful evidence was lost.

Use the URL-to-Markdown evaluation guide when choosing a provider, and the ingestion contract when deciding whether an extracted document is safe to index. This page completes the conversion and inspection task; it does not rank every extraction vendor.

Reference documentation: www.searchcans.com — /reader-api.

Related implementation and validation guides

• How to Choose a URL-to-Markdown API for RAG