Shopify & WooCommerce Catalog Change Monitor

Monitor public Shopify and WooCommerce product catalogs and emit normalized change events between Actor runs.

What it does

This Actor fetches public product catalog endpoints from Shopify and WooCommerce stores, normalizes products into a common structure, compares the current catalog with the previous snapshot stored in the default Apify Key-Value Store, and writes product-level change events to the dataset.

It is designed for lightweight monitoring of public e-commerce catalogs without browser automation, login flows, CAPTCHA bypass, or proxies by default.

Use cases

• Track new and removed products across competitor or partner stores.
• Monitor price and availability changes for public catalog items.
• Build recurring catalog intelligence feeds from simple Shopify and WooCommerce stores.
• Detect added or removed variants when stores expose variant data publicly.

Input

{
  "stores": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.allbirds.com",
      "platform": "shopify"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://woocommerce.com"
    }
  ],
  "autoDetectPlatform": true,
  "maxProductsPerStore": 500,
  "compareWithPreviousRun": true,
  "emitUnchangedProducts": false,
  "includeVariants": true,
  "requestTimeoutSecs": 30,
  "snapshotStoreName": "catalog-change-monitor-snapshots"
}

Input fields

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
stores	array	yes	-	Stores to monitor. Each item must include url and may include platform.
stores[].url	string	yes	-	Public store homepage or catalog URL.
stores[].platform	string	no	-	Optional platform override: shopify or woocommerce.
autoDetectPlatform	boolean	no	true	When no platform is provided, try Shopify first and WooCommerce second.
maxProductsPerStore	integer	no	500	Maximum number of products to fetch per store.
compareWithPreviousRun	boolean	no	true	Compare against the previous snapshot in the default Key-Value Store.
emitUnchangedProducts	boolean	no	false	Emit unchanged events for products with no detected changes.
includeVariants	boolean	no	true	Include variants in normalization and variant add/remove detection.
requestTimeoutSecs	integer	no	30	Timeout for each catalog HTTP request.
snapshotStoreName	string	no	catalog-change-monitor-snapshots	Named Apify Key-Value Store used to persist snapshots across Actor runs.

Output

Each dataset item is a normalized event:

{
  "storeUrl": "https://www.allbirds.com",
  "platform": "shopify",
  "eventType": "price_changed",
  "productId": "1234567890",
  "handle": "wool-runner",
  "title": "Wool Runner",
  "productUrl": "https://www.allbirds.com/products/wool-runner",
  "variantId": null,
  "variantTitle": null,
  "currency": null,
  "oldPrice": "98.00",
  "newPrice": "109.00",
  "oldAvailable": true,
  "newAvailable": true,
  "imageUrl": "https://cdn.shopify.com/example.jpg",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-23T10:00:00.000Z",
  "errorMessage": null
}

Event types

Event type	Description
new_product	Product exists in the current snapshot but not the previous snapshot.
removed_product	Product existed in the previous snapshot but not the current snapshot.
price_changed	Product-level normalized price changed.
availability_changed	Product-level normalized availability changed.
variant_added	Variant exists in the current product but not the previous product.
variant_removed	Variant existed in the previous product but not the current product.
unchanged	Product did not change and emitUnchangedProducts is enabled.
store_error	Store could not be fetched or platform detection failed.

How comparison works

For each store, the Actor stores a normalized snapshot in the named Apify Key-Value Store configured by snapshotStoreName under a stable key derived from the normalized store URL. On the next run, the Actor loads that snapshot, compares products by normalized product ID, compares variants by normalized variant ID, emits dataset events, and then saves the latest snapshot.

If compareWithPreviousRun is false, every fetched product is emitted as new_product and the latest snapshot is still saved for future runs.

Limitations

• Only public Shopify /products.json and WooCommerce Store API catalog endpoints are supported.
• Shopify product currency is not exposed by /products.json, so currency is usually null for Shopify.
• WooCommerce variant detail depends on what the public Store API exposes.
• The Actor does not log in, bypass CAPTCHA, use browser automation, or use proxies by default.
• Snapshots are stored in the named Key-Value Store configured by snapshotStoreName; changing this value starts a separate comparison history.
• Store-level failures are emitted as store_error events and do not fail the whole run.

Performance and costs

The Actor uses plain HTTP requests. Shopify is fetched in pages of up to 250 products and WooCommerce in pages of up to 100 products. Runtime and dataset size are mainly controlled by stores, maxProductsPerStore, and emitUnchangedProducts.

Responsible use

Use this Actor only with websites and data you are allowed to access. Respect target website terms, robots policies where applicable, and applicable laws. Do not use it to collect personal data, bypass access controls, or overload websites.

Changelog

0.1.0

• Initial MVP with Shopify and WooCommerce public catalog support.
• Added platform auto-detection, normalized snapshots, change events, and store-level error events.
• Added unit tests for normalization and diff behavior.