Home Hardware Australia Product Scraper

This Apify Actor allows you to scrape product data, categories, and detailed item information from Home Hardware Australia for price monitoring, product research, market research, availability tracking, and competitive analysis.

Features

• Product Search: Search for products using keywords, sort options, and pagination.
• Category Discovery: List searchable categories from live Unbxd facets.
• Filter Discovery: Get supported sort options and live filter groups for search UIs.
• Category Listings: Return products filtered by a category name or slug.
• Detailed Item Info: Get full specifications, pricing, and availability for a single product by id, slug, or URL.
• Connectivity Check: Probe Home Hardware storefront and search backend availability.
• Multi-Method HTTP Fallback: Automatically tries multiple HTTP clients (httpx, cloudscraper, tls_client, curl_cffi) for maximum success rate.
• Proxy Support: Integrated Apify proxy support with country filtering (AU recommended).
• User-Agent Randomization: Random User-Agent selection for reduced detection risk.
• Retry Logic: Automatic retry with exponential backoff for blocked requests.
• Standardized Infrastructure: Built on shared apify-wave1 runtime for consistency across actors.

Operation Guide

1. Probe

Check connectivity to Home Hardware storefront and search backend.

2. Categories

List all searchable category values from Unbxd facets. Use this to discover valid category names before calling the category operation.

3. Search Filters

Get supported sort options and live filter groups for building faceted search UIs.

4. Product Search

Provide a Search Query (e.g., "drill") to get a list of matching products. You can refine results using Sort, Page, and Page Size.

5. Category Scraping

Provide a Category Name (e.g., "Tools" or "tools") to fetch all products in that category.

6. Item Details

Provide an Item ID, Slug, or URL to get exhaustive details for a single item.

Examples

You can copy and paste these JSON inputs into the Apify Actor's "JSON" editor for quick testing.

Probe Connectivity

{
  "operation": "probe"
}

List Categories

{
  "operation": "categories"
}

Get Search Filters

{
  "operation": "search_filters"
}

Search for Drills

Returns a list of drill products sorted by relevance.

{
  "operation": "search",
  "query": "drill",
  "page": 1,
  "page_size": 10,
  "sort": "relevance"
}

Search for Paint Sorted by Price

Returns paint products sorted by price ascending.

{
  "operation": "search",
  "query": "paint",
  "page": 1,
  "page_size": 20,
  "sort": "price_asc"
}

Browse Tools Category

Returns products in the Tools category.

{
  "operation": "category",
  "category_name": "Tools",
  "page": 1,
  "page_size": 10,
  "sort": "relevance"
}

Fetch Specific Product by ID

Gets full details for a product using its SKU.

{
  "operation": "item",
  "item_id": "6172605"
}

Fetch Product by Slug

Gets full details using product slug.

{
  "operation": "item",
  "slug": "makita-drill"
}

Fetch Product by URL

Gets full details using full product URL.

{
  "operation": "item",
  "url": "https://www.homehardware.com.au/makita-drill"
}

Input Fields

Field	Required	Description	Example
operation	Required	Operation to perform: probe, categories, search_filters, search, category, or item	search
query	Optional	Text search query	drill
category_name	Optional	Category name or slug from /categories	Tools
item_id	Optional	SKU/unique id from search/category	6172605
slug	Optional	Product slug from search/category	makita-drill
url	Optional	Full product URL	https://www.homehardware.com.au/makita-drill
page	Optional	Page number	1
page_size	Optional	Number of products per page (max 100)	24
sort	Optional	Sort order (relevance, price_asc, price_desc)	relevance
proxy	Optional	Proxy mode (direct, apify, custom, auto)	auto
customProxyUrl	Optional	URL for custom proxy	http://proxy.example.com:8080
proxyCountry	Optional	Country for the proxy	AU
includeRaw	Optional	Include raw payload in summary	false

Output Fields

Each product item includes:

• id: Product SKU/unique ID.
• slug: Product URL slug.
• name: Product name.
• brand: Brand name.
• barcode: Product barcode/APN.
• source_url: URL to product page.
• category: Primary category.
• breadcrumbs: Full category hierarchy.
• description: Product description.
• availability: Availability status text.
• in_stock: Stock availability boolean.
• price: Current price.
• discount_price: Discounted price.
• current_price: Final price (discount or base).
• images: List of product image URLs.
• price_info: Detailed pricing information.
• source: Source identifier ("homehardware").

Proxy & Bot Protection

Home Hardware AU uses Unbxd search API which is generally accessible without strict bot protection. We recommend:

• Auto: Automatically handles proxy selection (defaults to direct mode).
• Direct: Bypasses proxy (recommended for this source).
• Custom: Uses a provided custom proxy URL.
• Apify: Uses Apify proxy pool with country filtering.

The actor includes automatic retry logic with exponential backoff for blocked requests (403, 429, 502, 503) and invalid JSON responses.

Pricing

• Actor Start: $0.005 per run
• Dataset Item: $0.0004 per item

Free/trial users are limited to 20 result requests per day.

Limitations

• This scraper is unofficial and not affiliated with Home Hardware.
• Home Hardware may change their API structure without notice.
• Some products may have incomplete data depending on source availability.
• Category names may change over time; use the categories endpoint to discover current names.
• High-volume scraping may trigger rate limiting or blocking.

Disclaimer

This scraper is unofficial and not affiliated with Home Hardware. Users are responsible for complying with Home Hardware's terms of service and applicable laws.