Dallas Building Permits Scraper

Collects structured permit rows from the public City of Dallas Building Permits dataset through its SODA JSON endpoint. The source exposes 11 columns and reported 126,840 rows when last updated on August 30, 2020. Dallas labels it historical and says active permit tracking has moved to the Accela Citizen Access Portal; this Actor does not return current permit status.

Input

{
  "maxItems": 100,
  "permitType": "Electrical (EL) Commercial  Alteration",
  "zipCode": "75228",
  "minValue": 1000
}

permitType and landUse are optional case-insensitive exact matches. zipCode is an optional five-digit match, minValue filters the source value column, and issuedAfter accepts an exclusive YYYY-MM-DD or MM/DD/YY date. Since the source date is text, the Actor filters date patterns through the SODA endpoint and verifies exact dates after parsing. maxItems is 1–1,000. When issuedAfter is provided, maxPages (1–100, default 20) caps API pages. Request timeout and retry bounds are listed under Developer Options.

Output

Each dataset item is one permit and carries the 11 original source fields in sourceFields, normalized permit/address/project/contractor fields, nested permitDetails, propertyDetails, financialDetails, contractorDetails, datasetMetadata, the applied filters, and source URLs. It includes more than 35 top-level fields. The permit type is split into category/code/occupancy/work type only when the source value follows the observed format. The contractor name, address, and phone are parsed only when the source text has a recognizable address/phone pattern.

The source does not publish coordinates, a unit for area, or an explicit currency column. Those are not fabricated. projectValueCurrency: USD is explicitly labeled as an inference from the source's Dallas, Texas jurisdiction.

Run and verify

Run apify validate-schema, npm test, and npm run lint. A local Actor run can use apify run --input-file <path-to-input.json>; its output is written under storage/datasets/default. RUN_METADATA reports the record count, status, filters, source rows/pages, completion reason, and source update date. A source failure with zero saved permits is FAILED / FAILED; after one or more permits have been saved, the run remains SUCCEEDED / PARTIAL. A completed or intentionally capped response is SUCCEEDED / COMPLETED. The dataset contains permit records only; errors remain in aggregate run metadata. No cloud Actor is deployed by this project.

Earlier project notes labeled the dataset CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, but the current browser review did not independently confirm a dataset-specific license. Verify the current license terms before redistributing records and retain City attribution.