How to Enrich a List of LinkedIn URLs (in PHP)

You can enrich a list of LinkedIn URLs in PHP with one file and the built-in cURL extension: read the URLs, call POST /v1/people/enrich for each, wait out any 429, and write the answers to a CSV. This guide gives you that file and explains each part.

TL;DR

• One PHP file, 39 lines, no Composer packages. It reads urls.txt and writes people.csv.
• Time: about 10 minutes to set up. At 4 requests a second, 1,000 URLs take at least 4 minutes.
• Cost: 1 LeadOcean record per URL we hold a match for. A miss is a 404 and is free, so the Free plan's 1,000 records cover up to 1,000 matches.

Prerequisites

• PHP 8.0 or newer with the cURL extension (php -m | grep curl).
• A LeadOcean API key, exported as $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY. The Free plan gives you one with 1,000 records for life, no card.
• A urls.txt file with one LinkedIn profile URL per line.

Step 1: Get a key and prepare the list

Sign up at app.leadocean.io, create a key and put it in your shell. Never write the key into the source file.

export LEADOCEAN_API_KEY="your-key-here"
printf '%s\n' \
  "https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe-acme" \
  "https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-roe-acme" > urls.txt

The enrich endpoint takes exactly one identifier per call: linkedin_url, email, phone or person_id. Enrich does not page. You make one call per URL, so "paging" here means walking your file line by line.

Step 2: Write the PHP script

Save this as enrich.php. Requests go to https://api.leadocean.io with the x-api-key header.

<?php
function enrich(string $key, string $url): array {
    $body = json_encode(['linkedin_url' => $url, 'reveal_email' => true]);
    for ($try = 0; $try < 5; $try++) {
        $retryAfter = 1;
        $ch = curl_init('https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/enrich');
        curl_setopt_array($ch, [
            CURLOPT_POST => true,
            CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $body,
            CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
            CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
            CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => ['x-api-key: ' . $key, 'Content-Type: application/json'],
            CURLOPT_HEADERFUNCTION => function ($c, $h) use (&$retryAfter) {
                if (stripos($h, 'retry-after:') === 0) {
                    $retryAfter = max(1, (int) trim(substr($h, 12)));
                }
                return strlen($h);
            },
        ]);
        $data = curl_exec($ch);
        $status = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
        curl_close($ch);
        if ($data === false) { sleep(1); continue; }
        if ($status === 429) { sleep($retryAfter); continue; }
        return [$status, $data];
    }
    return [0, 'gave up after 5 tries'];
}

$key = getenv('LEADOCEAN_API_KEY') ?: exit("Set LEADOCEAN_API_KEY\n");
$out = fopen('people.csv', 'w');
fputcsv($out, ['linkedin_url', 'status', 'json']);
foreach (file('urls.txt', FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES | FILE_SKIP_EMPTY_LINES) as $line) {
    $url = trim($line);
    [$status, $data] = enrich($key, $url);
    fputcsv($out, [$url, $status, $data]);
    usleep(250000);
}
fclose($out);

Three choices in that file matter:

• reveal_email: true returns the contact points on the record. It adds no extra record.
• usleep(250000) pauses 250 ms between calls. That keeps you at 4 requests a second, under the Free plan's limit of 5.
• On a 429 the header callback reads Retry-After, the script sleeps that many seconds, and tries again, up to 5 times. See API rate limits and 429 errors.

Step 3: Run it

php enrich.php
head -3 people.csv

The status column tells you what happened per URL: 200 is a match, 404 is nobody found. Filter on it before you load rows anywhere else.

Step 4: Parse the fields you need

The CSV stores the raw JSON so you lose nothing. When you know which fields you want, run json_decode($data, true) on each row. The current role is in contact_current_experiences[] and phones are in contact_phones[].phone. Since October 2026 the same call also returns career history in resume_data: past roles, education, certifications and awards.

Past employers carry no company_id yet. If you need a company record, call POST /v1/companies/enrich with the domain.

What you get

The response shape from the API reference, with placeholder values. This is not a real person.

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "profile_data": { "profile_full_name": "Jane Doe", "profile_headline": "VP Sales at Acme" },
    "contact_data": {
      "has_email": true,
      "email_status": "verified",
      "contact_emails": [{ "email": "jane.doe@acme.com", "type": "work", "status": "verified" }],
      "contact_phones": [{ "phone": "+1 415 555 0133", "type": "mobile" }],
      "contact_current_experiences": [{ "job_title": "VP Sales", "company_name": "Acme" }]
    },
    "resume_data": { "experiences": [], "educations": [], "certifications": [] }
  },
  "meta": { "key_hash": "...", "fetched_at": "2026-10-01" }
}

Source: response shape from the API reference (openapi.json, October 2026), with field names from the enrich docs. Each record also carries a fetched_at date, and the dataset refreshes monthly.

Troubleshooting

FAQ