Cambridge Building Permits Properties and Details Scraper

Query public building-permit records from the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts Inspectional Services Department. The Actor uses the official Socrata dataset qu2z-8suj (Building Permits: Addition/Alteration) and returns permit IDs, addresses, work descriptions, permit status/type, issue dates, contractors, valuations, property/building fields, public location flags, and source URLs.

Public source

https://data.cambridgema.gov/resource/qu2z-8suj.json

The source is queried with a bounded $limit, optional $offset, the public Socrata $q full-text filter for street, exact $where filters for permitType and status, and a stable newest-issue-date ordering. No login, API key, protected endpoint, or remote Apify operation is used.

Input

• street — optional full-text address/street filter.
• permitType — optional exact permit_type filter.
• status — optional exact status filter such as Active.
• maxItems — maximum records to store, from 1 to 500 (default 25).
• offset — source row offset, from 0 to 100,000 (default 0).
• timeoutSecs — public request timeout, from 5 to 120 seconds (default 30).
• requestDelayMs — polite delay before the request (default 0).

Output

Each successful record has recordType=permit, found=true, and dataAvailable=true. Costs are normalized to numbers when the source publishes numeric values; missing fields are omitted. Records include source-backed nested buildingDetails, residentialDetails, parkingDetails, constructionDetails, reviewFlags, and parsed locationDetails when those values are present. changeFlags includes permit-specific project and site-impact indicators. Applicant, architect, and licensed-name fields are intentionally omitted.

The dataset contains permit records only. A valid empty response reports SUCCEEDED / COMPLETED with zero rows. A request or processing failure with no saved permits reports FAILED / FAILED. If permit rows were saved before a later dataset, summary-store, or shutdown failure, the run remains SUCCEEDED / PARTIAL. Failed requests, invalid rows, and placeholder/diagnostic data never become dataset records. OUTPUT reports last-run counts and aggregate failure counts.

The City portal identifies the dataset as licensed under the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL). The dataset contains only completed applications and is updated daily. Fields remain source values; absent permit details are omitted rather than inferred.

Local development

npm install
npm test
apify validate-schema
apify run

Local datasets and the OUTPUT summary are written only under this Actor's storage/ directory. The lifecycle entrypoint uses Actor.exit({ exit: false }) for clean Node 24 local shutdown.