# Changelog of Maryland Contractor License Lookup & Export (MHIC) (`scrapebench/maryland-contractor-license-lookup`) Actor

- **URL**: https://apify.com/scrapebench/maryland-contractor-license-lookup/changelog.md
- **Full Actor documentation**: https://apify.com/scrapebench/maryland-contractor-license-lookup.md

## Changelog

### 0.1 — 2026-10-12

- First release. Two modes against the Maryland Home Improvement Commission (MHIC) public query
  of the Maryland Department of Labor (`dllr.state.md.us/cgi-bin/ElectronicLicensing/OP_Search`):
  - **Lookup** (`query`/`queries`): an MHIC registration number goes to the registration search;
    a name searches the business-name index AND the personal-name index (by last name, keeping the
    people whose name holds every word typed), interleaved and de-duplicated. `maxResults` is per
    query (default 50).
  - **Export** (no query): the business-location search, swept over the 26 city initials A–Z (the
    city field is a prefix match) — or only the cities / ZIP codes asked for — then filtered by
    city, ZIP, name or Maryland-only addresses. `maxResults` is run-wide (default 500, max 100,000).
- Each search keeps its own cookie jar (the CGI session is pinned to one backend by an F5 cookie),
  requests are spaced 2 s apart run-wide, and a Cloudflare 429 pauses every search for 60 s.
- A first page that is not a results page (an enforced reCAPTCHA, a challenge, an outage) is a free
  `blocked` notice, never 0 rows; a search cut mid-paging keeps its rows and adds a free
  `truncated` notice. Recon: `docs/actors/recon-maryland-contractor-license-lookup.md`.
- Push and charge in chunks of 500; notices are never charged. When the run's maximum charge is
  reached the run stops and adds a free `truncated` notice saying how many licences were not delivered.