# Tennessee DOT Qualified Products List (`tehsnarf/tdot-qualified-products-list`) Actor

Scrapes and structures Tennessee DOT's monthly Qualified Products List (QPL) PDF report of approved construction/road materials.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/tehsnarf/tdot-qualified-products-list.md
- **Developed by:** [Chris Hoover](https://apify.com/tehsnarf) (community)
- **Categories:** Lead generation, Automation, Other
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

Pay per usage

This Actor is paid per platform usage. The Actor is free to use, and you only pay for the Apify platform usage, which gets cheaper the higher subscription plan you have.

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

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
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.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## 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.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Tennessee DOT Qualified Products List

Scrapes and structures Tennessee DOT's monthly Qualified Products List (QPL) — the official PDF
report of construction/road materials approved for use on TDOT projects. Instead of manually
paging through a 500+ page PDF, get every approved product, its manufacturer, evaluation number,
and Build America Buy America (BABA) compliance status as clean structured data.

### Use cases

1. **Road contractors & estimators** — check whether a specific product/manufacturer is currently
   on TDOT's approved list before bidding a project, without opening the PDF.
2. **Manufacturers & suppliers** — monitor which of their products are listed, track competitors
   in a given material category, or verify BABA compliance status across their line.
3. **Compliance/procurement monitoring** — pull the "added in the last month" list on a schedule to
   catch new approvals as soon as TDOT publishes its monthly update.

### Input

| Field | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| `listType` | string | `"all"` | `"all"` (full current QPL) or `"addedLastMonth"` (only products added in the most recent monthly update) |
| `maxItems` | integer | 100 | Max product records to output |
| `categoryContains` | string | "" | Case-insensitive substring filter on Product Category |
| `manufacturerContains` | string | "" | Case-insensitive substring filter on manufacturer/source name |

### Output

| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| productCategory | string | e.g. "01 - Traffic Control Materials" |
| section | string | e.g. "A-Pav Marker (Raised/Snowplow./Reflect.)" |
| materialCode | string | TDOT material spec code, e.g. "918.20.031" |
| materialDescription | string | Material description, e.g. "Snowplowable Reflective Markers" |
| sourceId | string | TDOT internal source/manufacturer ID |
| manufacturerName | string | Manufacturer / supplier name |
| tradeName | string | Approved product trade name / model |
| evaluationNumber | string | TDOT evaluation number ("--" if none listed) |
| remarks | string | Free-text remarks/usage notes attached to the product row, if any |
| babaIndicator | string | "COMPLIANT", "EXEMPT", or "" — parsed from the PDF's Build America Buy America flag |
| listType | string | "all" or "addedLastMonth", echoes input |
| sourcePdfUrl | string | The source PDF this record was parsed from |
| pageNumber | integer | 1-indexed PDF page the record appeared on (provenance) |
| crawlTimestamp | string | ISO-8601 timestamp of the run |

Example record:

```json
{
  "productCategory": "01 - Traffic Control Materials",
  "section": "A-Pav Marker (Raised/Snowplow./Reflect.)",
  "materialCode": "918.26.041",
  "materialDescription": "Raised Reflective Pavement Markers",
  "sourceId": "89900678",
  "manufacturerName": "Pexco LLC",
  "tradeName": "RPM-Durable Raised Pavement Marker",
  "evaluationNumber": "13013",
  "remarks": "BABA COMPLIANT",
  "babaIndicator": "COMPLIANT",
  "listType": "all",
  "sourcePdfUrl": "https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/tdot/hq-materials-tests/qpl/Monthly_QPL.pdf",
  "pageNumber": 3,
  "crawlTimestamp": "2026-08-16T08:29:23.553889+00:00"
}
```

### How it works

TDOT republishes the entire QPL as a single PDF each month (`Monthly_QPL.pdf`, ~500 pages) plus a
short "added in the last month" PDF (`Monthly_Added_QPL.pdf`). The Actor downloads whichever one
`listType` selects, then walks its text blocks in document order — tracking the current Product
Category / Section / Material as it goes, and pairing each product row with its (optional) remarks
block — to reconstruct clean records without needing OCR or a browser.

**Known limitation:** a small minority of rows (well under 1% in testing) use irregular evaluation-
number formats the parser doesn't recognize (e.g. multi-part codes with embedded parenthetical
notes); these are logged and skipped rather than mis-attributed to the wrong product.

### Pricing

$3 per 1,000 results.

| Results | Cost |
|---|---|
| 100 | $0.30 |
| 500 | $1.50 |
| 1,000 | $3.00 |
| 5,000 | $15.00 |

Basis: a narrower, single-state procurement dataset than federal compliance lists — priced below
`epa-fuel-programs-registration-lists` ($4/1,000) and `niosh-certified-equipment-list-respirators`
($5.99/1,000) since this Actor does a single cheap PDF-file parse rather than a per-item crawl.

# Actor input Schema

## `listType` (type: `string`):

"all" parses the full current QPL (Monthly\_QPL.pdf). "addedLastMonth" parses only products added in the most recent monthly update (Monthly\_Added\_QPL.pdf).

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of product records to output

## `categoryContains` (type: `string`):

Case-insensitive substring filter on Product Category (optional)

## `manufacturerContains` (type: `string`):

Case-insensitive substring filter on manufacturer/source name (optional)

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "listType": "all",
  "maxItems": 100,
  "categoryContains": "",
  "manufacturerContains": ""
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (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 = {};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("tehsnarf/tdot-qualified-products-list").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 = {}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("tehsnarf/tdot-qualified-products-list").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 '{}' |
apify call tehsnarf/tdot-qualified-products-list --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,tehsnarf/tdot-qualified-products-list"
        }
    }
}

```

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/08vbl7v2csdeBQhuB/builds/AgrL30EmZ8MMEgLdK/openapi.json