# Defra UK Wholesale Produce Prices (`vixendata/defra-uk-wholesale-produce-prices`) Actor

Official England and Wales national wholesale produce averages with bounded history and exact GBP decimals.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/vixendata/defra-uk-wholesale-produce-prices.md
- **Developed by:** [Vixendata](https://apify.com/vixendata) (community)
- **Security:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.00 / 1,000 date/category/item/variety/unit price observations

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

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

## Defra UK Wholesale Produce Prices

A bounded Apify Actor for the official Defra wholesale horticultural price CSV. It discovers the current machine-readable CSV from the official GOV.UK dataset page on each run; no dated download URL is hardcoded into production code.

### What the observations mean

These are national average wholesale prices for selected home-grown horticultural produce in England and Wales. The source describes averages of the most usual prices charged in Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester and a London market (New Spitalfields or Western International). They are **not individual-market prices, retail prices or live spot quotations**. Current source publication cadence is fortnightly; historical observations may be weekly.

Verified source snapshot on 8 October 2026: 17,702 CSV observations, 3 November 2017 through 28 September 2026; 53 observations at the latest source date. Latest Bramley seedling apple observation: GBP 1.23/kg. GBP is confirmed by the accompanying official current-week ODS, whose table uses £ headings. “Latest” always means the maximum source observation date, never today's date. Each row reports latestSourceDate, observedAt and sourceAgeDays; the Actor warns if the newest observation is more than 21 days old. This threshold is a warning heuristic, not a publication guarantee.

### Inputs

Default: latestOnly=true and maxItems=100. The newest date is selected globally before applying filters, so an item absent from that date returns zero rows rather than silently returning an older price.

- latestOnly: true for the newest published source date; false for bounded history
- startDate/endDate: inclusive YYYY-MM-DD, both required for history, forbidden in latest mode
- categories: case-insensitive exact source categories, e.g. fruit, vegetable, cut_flowers, pot_plants
- items: case-insensitive exact source items, e.g. apples
- maxItems: 1–10,000, deterministic newest-first output cap; default 100

Empty filter lists mean all. No custom URLs, proxies, credentials or browser are accepted. History requires both dates and cannot exceed the actual CSV coverage. Sample small inputs are in smoke/latest.json and smoke/history.json.

### Output and precision

One observation per (date, category, item, variety, unit), with deterministic SHA-256 id. Different varieties and units remain separate. Identical repeated observations collapse; conflicting prices for the same key fail the run. Output is sorted descending by date, category, item, variety, unit. Price is a **decimal string** (for example "1.23") to avoid binary floating-point rounding; currency is GBP. Units are preserved verbatim (observed: kg, head, twin, stem, unit). Zero prices are preserved. Missing, negative or malformed prices, dates, or required columns fail closed rather than becoming zero/null.

Every output includes official source URL, discovered CSV URL, attribution, OGL license link, source and geographic aggregation. All rows are validated against .actor/dataset_schema.json fields before any dataset push. RUN_SUMMARY includes matched/output/source counts, truncation, latest source date, source age, observation time, CSV URL and SHA-256. Zero matches are a successful empty dataset with a warning and summary. Network or source failures fail the run; they do not create invented rows or error rows.

### Safe source access

Fixed HTTPS host allowlist: www.gov.uk and assets.publishing.service.gov.uk. Every request and redirect target is checked. The relevant origin's robots.txt is read before content, and disallow rules stop access. An explicit robots 404 means absent rules; other HTTP errors fail. Cross-origin robots redirects are refused. Requests are serial, with at least one second between requests and longer robots Crawl-delay respected. Bounds: 20 total HTTP requests, 5 redirects per fetch, 30-second socket timeout, 2 MiB page, 256 KiB robots, 8 MiB CSV and 100,000 parsed data rows. The full bounded CSV is read once even for small output caps; maxItems is an output limit, not an upstream byte limit.

HTTP 401/403/429 and CAPTCHA/challenge markers stop immediately. There is no retry, proxy rotation, login or challenge bypass. CSV discovery fails if zero or multiple distinct matching official CSV links appear. Schema drift and malformed rows stop processing rather than silently skipping observations.

### Build and local tests

Python 3.12. Install requirements.txt into a clean virtual environment, then run:

```
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python -m unittest discover -s tests -v
python -m src
```

Runtime dependencies are pinned: Apify 4.0.2, Crawlee 1.10.4, Pydantic 2.13.5, jsonschema 4.26.0. The Actor uses Apify for lifecycle, input, dataset and key-value output, and standard-library HTTP/CSV parsing. Crawlee is pinned for SDK compatibility, not a claim of browser crawling.

The self-contained tests use 12 genuine bounded source observations, a sanitized actual official attachment link, robots fixture, and mocks for transport failures. They verify both official Apify metaschemas, every fixture output row against dataset fields, decimals/zero/null behavior, history/latest semantics, filters/caps, duplicates, malformed input/CSV, URL/redirect/robots/challenge gates and an isolated real SDK entrypoint. Official Apify schema snapshots and Apache license notice are under tests/metaschemas. No Apify account, spend or paid run is required. Local SDK tests clear platform environment variables and use a temporary local storage directory.

### Source and licensing

Official source: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/wholesale-fruit-and-vegetable-prices-weekly-average

The official dataset page explicitly declares Open Government Licence v3.0 (except where otherwise stated): https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Crown copyright. The license destination itself returned HTTP 403 during research; no attempt was made to bypass it. The licensing attribution here is based on the official source page's explicit license marker, not a claim that the full license text was downloaded. Sanitized fixtures contain no user data, tokens, cookies or personal information. See tests/fixtures/provenance.json and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

# Actor input Schema

## `latestOnly` (type: `boolean`):

Newest date in the full source CSV, before filters. Set false and provide both dates for history.

## `startDate` (type: `string`):

Inclusive YYYY-MM-DD. Required when latestOnly=false.

## `endDate` (type: `string`):

Inclusive YYYY-MM-DD. Required when latestOnly=false.

## `categories` (type: `array`):

Case-insensitive source values, e.g. fruit, vegetable, cut_flowers, pot_plants; empty means all.

## `items` (type: `array`):

Case-insensitive source values, e.g. apples. Empty means all.

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

Deterministic newest-first cap. Truncation is reported in RUN_SUMMARY.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "latestOnly": true,
  "categories": [],
  "items": [],
  "maxItems": 100
}
```

# 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("vixendata/defra-uk-wholesale-produce-prices").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("vixendata/defra-uk-wholesale-produce-prices").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 vixendata/defra-uk-wholesale-produce-prices --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,vixendata/defra-uk-wholesale-produce-prices"
        }
    }
}
```

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/eT9cTQY2pxKc9BFdB/builds/3ZhKfndmOM5VVk5KB/openapi.json