City Calendar Scraper — US Local Events

Extract events from US city .gov and community calendars automatically. One actor, unified output, no custom coding needed.

What it does

This actor scrapes event listings from city and community calendar websites. It automatically detects the calendar type and extracts event data into a clean, normalized format.

Supported calendar types:

• Drupal Views Calendar (monthly grid with event items)
• CivicPlus / VisionInternet event widgets
• FullCalendar JS-rendered calendars (Revize CMS)
• Generic event listings (any page with event-like structure)

Who is this for

• Newsletter publishers — pull local events for weekly roundups
• Real estate agents — show community events near listings
• Local SEO agencies — generate content from city calendars
• Event aggregators — build databases of community events
• Researchers — track municipal activities across cities

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
urls	string[]	required	List of city/community calendar page URLs
maxEventsPerSite	integer	50	Maximum events to extract per URL (1-200)
includeDescription	boolean	true	Fetch full event description from detail pages
outputFormat	string	csv	Output format: "json" or "csv"

Example input

{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.fostercity.org/calendar",
    "https://www.redwoodcity.org/events",
    "https://www.ssfca.gov/Departments/Parks-Recreation/Events"
  ],
  "maxEventsPerSite": 20,
  "includeDescription": true,
  "outputFormat": "csv"
}

Output

Each event contains:

Field	Description
eventName	Event title
date	Event date
time	Event time (if available)
city	City name extracted from URL
venue	Venue or location (if available)
description	Full event description (if includeDescription is enabled)
price	Free/Paid info (if detected)
eventUrl	Direct link to event detail page
imageUrl	Event image URL (if available)
sourceUrl	Calendar page that was scraped
scrapedAt	Timestamp of extraction

Example output

{
  "eventName": "Egg Hunt 2026",
  "date": "2026-04-04",
  "time": "10:00am",
  "city": "fostercity",
  "venue": "Leo J. Ryan Meadow",
  "description": "The City of Foster City presents our inaugural Egg Hunt...",
  "price": "N/A",
  "eventUrl": "https://www.fostercity.org/parksrec/page/egg-hunt-2026",
  "imageUrl": null,
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.fostercity.org/calendar",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-04-05T07:15:10.823Z"
}

How it works

1. The actor visits each URL you provide
2. It detects the calendar/CMS type automatically
3. Events are extracted using the matching strategy
4. If includeDescription is enabled, it visits detail pages for full descriptions
5. Data is normalized and deduplicated
6. Results are saved to the dataset (JSON) and optionally as CSV

Proxy

Recommended: Residential proxies for best results. Many .gov sites block datacenter IPs.

Performance

• ~10 events per site takes 5-15 seconds
• Memory usage: under 1024 MB
• Each URL is processed sequentially for stability

Cost estimate

• ~0.3 compute units per 10 sites with 50 events each
• Using includeDescription: true increases compute time (detail page visits)

Limitations

• Event data accuracy depends on source site structure
• Some fields may not be available on all sites (venue, price, image)
• FullCalendar (JS-rendered) sites may have limited extraction
• If a site changes its layout, extraction may need updating
• Sites with heavy bot protection may return fewer results

Tips

• Start with maxEventsPerSite: 10 and includeDescription: false for quick testing
• Use includeDescription: true for production runs to get full event details
• Check the logs to see which calendar type was detected for each URL
• CSV output opens directly in Excel and Google Sheets (UTF-8 with BOM)

Disclaimer

Data accuracy depends on source sites. This actor extracts publicly available information. User is responsible for compliance with source site Terms of Service. This actor does not store or cache data between runs.

Changelog

• 1.0 — Initial release: Drupal Calendar, CivicPlus Widget, FullCalendar, Generic fallback strategies