# MSN Weather Location Search Scraper (`romy/msn-weather-location-search-scraper`) Actor

Resolves free-text place names to MSN's own location-suggestion entities, via MSN's own public weather API.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/romy/msn-weather-location-search-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Romy](https://apify.com/romy) (community)
- **Categories:** News
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $0.47 / 1,000 location searches

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## MSN Weather Location Search Scraper

Unofficial, reverse-engineered wrapper around MSN's own public weather API. Resolves free-text place names to location-suggestion entities (places, addresses, businesses) as structured JSON — no scraping, no HTML parsing, no login required.

### What

A run-based Actor that takes a list of free-text place names, looks each one up against MSN's own location-autosuggest backend, and pushes one row per matched suggestion to the dataset.

### Why

Useful as a standalone lookup (e.g. to show a user a disambiguation list for an ambiguous place name), or to feed into another pipeline that needs MSN's own entity ids for a place.

### Input

| Field | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| `queries` | array of strings | Yes | One or more free-text place names to look up. |
| `market` | string | No (default `en-us`) | Affects the language of returned suggestions. |

### Output

One dataset row per matched suggestion per query:

```json
{
    "query": "Jakarta",
    "market": "en-us",
    "_type": "Place",
    "id": "sid:\"6261fc72-a172-5cdd-9c67-a7644a026c29\"",
    "address": { "text": "Jakarta Special Capital Region of Jakarta" }
}
```

Field names and shapes beyond `query`/`market` follow MSN's own suggestion-entity format directly — shape varies by `_type` (`Place`, `Address`, `LocalBusiness`).

### Known limitations

- This Actor does **not** return decimal coordinates — MSN's location-autosuggest backend returns entity ids and address text, not lat/lon. It's a disambiguation/lookup step, not a geocoder.
- A query with no matches is skipped with a logged note rather than producing an empty row.
- This Actor only wraps the weather vertical's location lookup — no news, finance, or sports data.

### Pricing

Pay-per-event:

- `apify-actor-start` — flat fee per run.
- `location-search` — one charge per query successfully looked up.

# Actor input Schema

## `queries` (type: `array`):

One or more free-text place names to look up.

## `market` (type: `string`):

Affects language of the returned suggestions.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "queries": [
    "Jakarta"
  ],
  "market": "en-us"
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `dataset` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "queries": [
        "Jakarta"
    ],
    "market": "en-us"
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("romy/msn-weather-location-search-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "queries": ["Jakarta"],
    "market": "en-us",
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("romy/msn-weather-location-search-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "queries": [
    "Jakarta"
  ],
  "market": "en-us"
}' |
apify call romy/msn-weather-location-search-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,romy/msn-weather-location-search-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/gr3qZGw8GgNmIcGC7/builds/inTEXfQDBVfNrroMj/openapi.json