modscrapper

A minimal Vercel serverless API that returns the latest available version of an Android app from Platinmods.

Usage

Search by app name

GET /api/version?q=<app name>

GET /api/version?q=BuzzKill

Search by package name

Pass an Android package name instead of an app title. The API runs a full-text search on Platinmods (rather than title-only), which matches threads whose body contains the Google Play URL for that package — each Platinmods thread includes a Play Store link, so only threads for that exact app are returned.

GET /api/version?q=io.appground.blek

Use a Platinmods URL directly

Pass a thread URL to skip scraping entirely — the version is read straight from the slug, no HTTP requests:

GET /api/version?url=https://platinmods.com/threads/buzzkill-v30-11-0-mod-apk.281862/

Or pass a search results URL (e.g. copied from the browser) to use a specific query:

GET /api/version?url=https://platinmods.com/search/157784990/?q=BuzzKill&c[title_only]=1&o=date

Response formats

Parameter	Content-Type	Description
(default)	text/html	HTML index page (Obtainium-compatible)
&format=json	application/json	Machine-readable
&format=rss	application/rss+xml	APKMirror-compatible RSS feed

JSON response

{
  "version": "v30.11.0",
  "thread_url": "https://platinmods.com/threads/buzzkill-notification-manager-v30-11-0-mod-apk-license-check-remove.281862/",
  "all_results": [
    { "version": "v30.11.0", "thread_url": "https://platinmods.com/threads/..." },
    { "version": "v30.9",    "thread_url": "https://platinmods.com/threads/..." }
  ],
  "search_url": "https://platinmods.com/search/157785203/?q=BuzzKill&c[title_only]=1&o=date",
  "source": "platinmods"
}

version is always the highest version found — results are sorted by semantic version number, not post date, so a recently-bumped old thread cannot displace a newer release.

Error responses

Status	Meaning
400	Missing q or url parameter
404	No versioned threads found for the query
502	Platinmods returned an unexpected response
500	Internal error

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Obtainium integration

Track-only — Platinmods requires authentication to download files, so Obtainium will detect version changes but you'll need to download the APK manually.

Two source types are supported. Option A (APKMirror) is recommended — it also surfaces the release date.

Option A — APKMirror source (version + release date)

The /apk/<Author>/<AppName> URL structure is designed to satisfy Obtainium's APKMirror source parser, which:

• validates that the URL path contains /apk/<org>/<app>
• fetches {url}/feed/ to get the RSS feed
• uses <Author> (the second path segment) as the developer name in the app entry

Field	Value
App source URL	https://<your-deployment>/apk/Platinmods/<App Name or package ID>
Override source	APKMirror
Mark as track-only	✅ enabled

Examples:

• https://<your-deployment>/apk/Platinmods/BuzzKill — by name

• https://<your-deployment>/apk/Platinmods/io.appground.blek — by package ID (full-text search; sibling apps with different package IDs are excluded automatically)

• Obtainium shows Platinmods as the developer name (from the URL segment — you can use any label you like)

• Obtainium fetches …/apk/Platinmods/BuzzKill/feed/, which returns RSS:

<item>
  <title>BuzzKill 30.11.0 by Platinmods</title>
  <pubDate>Thu, 06 Feb 2026 03:04:00 GMT</pubDate>
</item>

Version is extracted from the title (first digit → last by). Release date comes from the thread's post timestamp.

What's New

When you tap What's New in Obtainium, it opens {appUrl}/#whatsnew in a browser. The index page detects this hash and redirects automatically to the latest Platinmods thread.

Option B — HTML source (version only)

Field	Value
Source URL	https://<your-deployment>/api/version?q=<App Name>
APK link filter	(leave default)
Version extraction regex	v([\d.]+)\.apk
Mark as track-only	✅ enabled

Each result link ends with v<version>.apk (e.g. …/v30.11.0.apk). Obtainium's default .apk filter picks it up and the version regex captures the version number.

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App index pages

Browsing to /apk/<Author>/<AppName> directly in a browser shows a human-readable release list:

https://<your-deployment>/apk/Platinmods/BuzzKill

Each row links to both the synthetic .apk URL (for Obtainium) and the real Platinmods thread.

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How it works

Package name queries (when ?q= is a package ID)

If ?q= looks like a package name (e.g. io.appground.blek), the API switches to a full-text search on Platinmods instead of the default title-only search. Every Platinmods thread includes the app's Google Play URL in the post body, which contains the package ID — so Platinmods' full-text index returns only threads for that exact package, automatically excluding sibling apps (e.g. the "Pro" variant with a different package ID). No external requests are made. The app's display name is derived from the first result's thread URL slug.

Platinmods scraping (when ?q= is an app name)

Platinmods uses XenForo, which requires a CSRF-protected form POST to initiate a search. The function performs three requests on each ?q= call:

1. GET /search/?type=post — loads the search form to obtain a session cookie and _xfToken CSRF token
2. POST /search/search — submits the search; XenForo processes it and redirects to a cached results URL
3. GET /search/<id>/?o=date — re-fetches the cached results sorted by date (newest first)

When ?url= points at a thread URL (/threads/…), steps 1–3 are skipped entirely — the version is read directly from the URL slug.

Version selection

After scraping, all results are sorted by semantic version number descending, so the highest version is always first regardless of which thread was most recently posted or updated. This prevents a bumped old thread from being mistakenly reported as the latest release.

Version strings are parsed from thread URL slugs: v30-11-0 → v30.11.0, ver-6-19-0 → v6.19.0.

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Deployment

Requires Node.js 18+ (uses native fetch — no npm dependencies).

npx vercel

Local testing

node test.mjs BuzzKill