Harris County Court Records — Official Dataset Importer

Import public bulk court datasets published by the Harris County District Clerk into an Apify dataset. Use it for lawful, repeatable civil and criminal filing monitoring, reporting, and research workflows.

This actor deliberately uses the District Clerk's public dataset directory rather than automating the interactive record-search application. The District Clerk asks commercial customers using data-scraping scripts to use its public datasets to avoid congestion. It does not authenticate, solve CAPTCHAs, search by person or case number, access sealed information, or download court documents.

When to use it

Use this actor when you need the newest official bulk feed for criminal filings, criminal dispositions, civil case summaries, civil parties, or civil filings. It is useful for legal operations teams monitoring daily activity, journalists building source-attributable datasets, and data teams loading official exports into a warehouse.

Do not use it for background checks, employment, housing, insurance, credit, or other high-impact decisions about people. Do not use it to seek confidential, sealed, juvenile, or account-protected records. This actor does not provide legal advice.

Input

datasetFamilies chooses official source families. The default is criminalFilings. maxItems caps saved rows and therefore costs; begin with 25. Leave sourceDate blank for the newest listed data file, or pass a date currently shown in the official directory. Keep includeHistorical disabled unless you intentionally need older, weekly, or monthly source files.

{ "datasetFamilies": ["criminalFilings"], "maxItems": 25 }

Output

One dataset item is emitted per source row. sourceDataset and sourceUrl preserve provenance. fields contains header-normalized columns from the official file, because column layouts vary by dataset family.

{
  "sourceDataset": "CrimFilingsDaily_withHeadings.txt",
  "sourceDate": "2026-07-21",
  "recordType": "criminalFilings",
  "fields": { "case_number": "…" },
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.hcdistrictclerk.com/…",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-22T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Pricing

The actor charges $0.00005 when a run starts and $0.001 for each saved official source row. maxItems is a hard cap, so a 100-row run has a maximum record-event cost of $0.10 plus the start event. Apify usage-based compute and proxy billing also applies where enabled.

Responsible use

Court records can be sensitive and may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrectly indexed at the source. Retain only data you are authorized to hold, follow applicable law and source conditions, validate before acting, and do not attempt to use this actor to bypass any access control.

What data does Harris County Court Records — Official Dataset Importer return?

Field	Type	Description
sourceDataset	string	Filename as displayed in the official District Clerk public-dataset directory.
sourceDate	string or null	Date displayed next to the official bulk file, when available.
recordType	string	Normalized official dataset family.
fields	object	Header-normalized source columns and values from the official bulk file.
sourceUrl	string	Direct URL of the downloaded District Clerk public dataset.
scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp when this row was imported.

Run Harris County Court Records — Official Dataset Importer with the Apify API

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('muhammadafzal/harris-county-court-records').call({
  "datasetFamilies": [
    "criminalFilings"
  ],
  "maxItems": 25,
  "sourceDate": "",
  "includeHistorical": false
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

You can also run the Actor from Apify Console, schedules, webhooks, the REST API, Make, Zapier, n8n, or the hosted Apify MCP server.

Support

When reporting a problem, include the Actor run ID, a redacted input, the expected result, and a small public example URL when applicable. Do not post API tokens, cookies, credentials, or personal data in an issue.

Frequently asked questions

Can I schedule Harris County Court Records — Official Dataset Importer?

Yes. Use an Apify schedule to run the same saved input at a chosen interval, then connect a webhook or integration to process the dataset when the run finishes.

How should I test a new input?

Begin with the prefilled example or a small limit. Confirm that the output fields, source coverage, runtime, and live charges match your workflow before increasing the scope.

How do I export the results?

Open the run's default dataset in Apify Console and export JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS. Applications can retrieve the same records through the Apify API client or REST dataset endpoint.

Can an AI agent call this Actor?

Yes. Add muhammadafzal/harris-county-court-records through the hosted Apify MCP server or call it through the API. The Actor's input and dataset schemas help agents construct valid requests and interpret returned records.