Browns Shoes Scraper

Extract product data from Browns Shoes e-commerce platform with speed and reliability. This scraper prioritizes JSON API extraction for maximum performance and automatically falls back to HTML parsing when needed.

Key Features

• Dual Extraction Strategy — Attempts JSON API first for 10x faster scraping, seamlessly falls back to HTML parsing
• Smart Pagination — Automatically navigates through multiple pages until reaching desired product count
• Flexible Filtering — Filter by category, brand, price range, color, and size
• Comprehensive Data — Captures product names, brands, pricing, images, stock status, and URLs
• Production Ready — Built with Crawlee and Apify SDK for enterprise-grade reliability

Input Configuration

Configure the scraper using these parameters:

Parameter	Type	Description	Default
startUrls	Array	Custom Browns Shoes URLs to scrape (overrides category and filters)	[]
category	String	Product category: women, men, kids, or sale	women
brand	String	Filter by specific brand (e.g., UGG, Adidas, New Balance)	""
minPrice	Integer	Minimum price filter in CAD	null
maxPrice	Integer	Maximum price filter in CAD	null
color	String	Filter products by color	""
size	String	Filter products by size	""
maxItems	Integer	Maximum number of products to extract	100
maxPages	Integer	Maximum listing pages to process	50
proxyConfiguration	Object	Proxy settings (residential proxies recommended)	Apify Proxy

Input Examples

Example 1: Scrape Women's Category

{
  "category": "women",
  "maxItems": 100,
  "maxPages": 10
}

Example 2: Filter by Brand and Price

{
  "category": "men",
  "brand": "Adidas",
  "minPrice": 50,
  "maxPrice": 200,
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example 3: Custom URLs

{
  "startUrls": [
    {"url": "https://www.brownsshoes.com/en/women/boots"},
    {"url": "https://www.brownsshoes.com/en/women/shoes/sneakers"}
  ],
  "maxItems": 200
}

Output Schema

Each product is returned as a JSON object with the following structure:

{
  "title": "Product Name",
  "brand": "Brand Name",
  "price": 149.99,
  "originalPrice": 199.99,
  "currency": "CAD",
  "url": "https://www.brownsshoes.com/...",
  "image": "https://www.brownsshoes.com/images/...",
  "colors": ["Black", "White"],
  "sizes": ["7", "8", "9"],
  "inStock": true,
  "productId": "123456"
}

Field Descriptions

Usage Tips

Optimal Performance

• Use residential proxies for better reliability and to avoid rate limiting
• Set reasonable maxItems values (100-500) for faster runs
• The scraper automatically optimizes between JSON API and HTML parsing

Filtering Products

• Combine multiple filters (brand + price range + category) for precise results
• Leave filters empty to scrape all products in a category
• Use startUrls for complete control over which pages to scrape

Handling Large Datasets

• For extensive scraping (1000+ items), increase maxPages accordingly
• Monitor your Apify plan limits for dataset storage and compute usage
• Consider breaking large scrapes into multiple smaller runs by category

Technical Details

Extraction Methods

This scraper employs a two-tier extraction strategy:

1. JSON API Priority — Attempts to fetch structured JSON data from Browns Shoes' internal API endpoints for maximum speed and reliability
2. HTML Fallback — If JSON extraction fails, automatically parses HTML content using CSS selectors

Rate Limiting & Proxies

Browns Shoes implements standard e-commerce protection. Using Apify's residential proxy network ensures:

• Geographic distribution of requests
• Reduced chance of IP blocking
• Consistent access to content

Data Quality

The scraper includes built-in mechanisms to ensure data quality:

• URL deduplication prevents duplicate products
• Automatic price parsing and normalization
• Null handling for missing or unavailable fields
• Image URL validation and conversion to absolute paths

Common Use Cases

Market Research

Monitor pricing trends, track product availability, and analyze competitor offerings across different categories and brands.

Price Monitoring

Set up scheduled runs to track price changes on specific products or categories over time.

Inventory Analysis

Track which products are in stock, which sizes are available, and identify restocking patterns.

Product Catalog Building

Build comprehensive product databases for comparison shopping platforms or affiliate marketing sites.

Integration

Using the Output

Export scraped data in multiple formats:

• JSON — Structured data for APIs and web applications
• CSV/Excel — Spreadsheet analysis and reporting
• XML — Legacy system integration
• RSS — Feed-based monitoring

Connecting to Other Tools

The Apify platform offers seamless integrations with:

• Google Sheets for automatic spreadsheet updates
• Webhooks for real-time data delivery
• Cloud storage (AWS S3, Google Cloud, Azure)
• Database connections (MongoDB, PostgreSQL)

Troubleshooting

No Products Returned

• Verify the category name is correct (women, men, kids, sale)
• Check if filters are too restrictive (try removing some filters)
• Ensure startUrls point to valid product listing pages

Incomplete Data

• Some products may have missing fields (e.g., no sale price if not on discount)
• This is expected behavior — the scraper preserves data integrity by not fabricating values

Rate Limiting Issues

• Enable proxy configuration with residential proxies
• Reduce maxConcurrency in advanced settings
• Add delays between requests if needed

Performance Benchmarks

Products	Avg. Runtime	Compute Units
100	2-3 minutes	~0.05 CU
500	8-12 minutes	~0.15 CU
1000	15-20 minutes	~0.30 CU

Note: Actual performance varies based on proxy configuration, network conditions, and Browns Shoes website response times.

Support & Feedback

Need help or have suggestions? We're here to assist:

• Open an issue on the Actor's support page
• Contact through the Apify Console
• Check the Apify documentation for platform-specific questions

License

This Actor is distributed under the ISC license. See the license file for more details.

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Built with Apify SDK and Crawlee for reliable, scalable web scraping.