linkedin

A Go library to fetch LinkedIn user profile data using authenticated session cookies from your browser.

Features

• Minimal cookie usage: In practice, only li_at cookie is required
• Automatic cookie extraction from Firefox/Firefox Developer Edition using kooky
• Command-line tool for quick profile lookups
• Clean API following Go best practices
• Context-aware with structured logging
• Debug mode to inspect cookies and requests
• Handles modern LinkedIn SDUI (Server-Driven UI) format

Installation

As a library:

go get github.com/tstromberg/linkedin

As a command-line tool:

go install github.com/tstromberg/linkedin/cmd/linkedin@latest

Or build from source:

make build
./bin/linkedin <profile-url>

Command-Line Usage

# Basic usage
linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-str%C3%B6mberg-9977261/

# With verbose logging
linkedin -v https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-str%C3%B6mberg-9977261/

# With debug mode (shows cookies and requests)
linkedin -debug https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-str%C3%B6mberg-9977261/

Output:

LinkedIn Profile
================
Name:     Thomas Strömberg
Headline: Software Engineer at Google
Employer: Google
Location: Mountain View, CA
URL:      https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-strömberg-9977261/

Library Usage

package main

import (
    "context"
    "fmt"
    "log"

    "github.com/tstromberg/linkedin"
)

func main() {
    ctx := context.Background()

    client, err := linkedin.New(ctx)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }

    // Optional: enable debug mode
    // client.EnableDebug()

    profile, err := client.FetchProfile(ctx, "https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-strömberg-9977261/")
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }

    fmt.Printf("Name: %s\n", profile.Name)
    fmt.Printf("Employer: %s\n", profile.CurrentEmployer)
}

Minimal Cookie Requirements

After testing, LinkedIn profile fetching requires only 4 cookies:

1. li_at - Authentication token (REQUIRED)
2. JSESSIONID - Session ID (REQUIRED)
3. lidc - Data center routing (REQUIRED)
4. bcookie - Browser cookie (may be required)

The library automatically filters to use only these essential cookies, ignoring all others from your browser.

Using Environment Variables

Instead of extracting cookies from your browser, you can set them as environment variables:

export LINKEDIN_LI_AT="your-li_at-cookie-value"
export LINKEDIN_JSESSIONID="your-jsessionid-value"
export LINKEDIN_LIDC="your-lidc-value"
export LINKEDIN_BCOOKIE="your-bcookie-value"

linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/...

Environment variables take precedence over browser cookies. This is useful for:

• CI/CD pipelines
• Docker containers
• Serverless functions
• Any environment without a browser

Testing Cookie Combinations

To determine the minimum required cookies for your LinkedIn account:

make test-cookies URL=https://www.linkedin.com/in/your-profile/

Or build and run directly:

go build -o bin/test-cookies ./cmd/test-cookies
./bin/test-cookies -url https://www.linkedin.com/in/your-profile/

This will test various cookie combinations and report which ones work:

• li_at only
• li_at + JSESSIONID
• li_at + JSESSIONID + lidc
• All 4 cookies
• And various other combinations

Requirements

• Option 1: Logged into LinkedIn in Firefox (for automatic cookie extraction)
• Option 2: LinkedIn cookies set as environment variables
• LinkedIn cookies must be valid and not expired

How It Works

1. Uses kooky to extract LinkedIn session cookies from Firefox
2. Filters to only essential cookies (li_at, JSESSIONID, lidc, bcookie)
3. Makes authenticated HTTP requests to LinkedIn profile pages with proper Firefox headers
4. Parses embedded Voyager API JSON data and HTML meta tags
5. Returns structured profile data

Development

# Run tests
make test

# Build the CLI tool
make build

# Run with arguments
make run ARGS="-v https://www.linkedin.com/in/..."

# Run linter (requires golangci-lint)
make lint

Security Note

This library accesses your browser's cookies to authenticate with LinkedIn. Only use with profiles you have permission to access.