RTX 5060 investigation: confirmed via pc-builder.io's own server-side
search (search_query=RTX 5060 against the full 6222-product GPU catalog,
0 results) that it simply isn't in pc-builder.io's catalog yet - not a
scraping bug, the source data doesn't have it. However, while checking
whether the other merchants had it in stock, found a real matching bug:
labelMatchesModelToken bug: extractModelToken("...RTX 5060 Ti...") only
returned "5060", identical to extractModelToken("...RTX 5060...") without
Ti. Every merchant lookup for either card matched on plain "5060" and
could silently return the *other* card's price (confirmed live: LDLC and
Grosbill returned the exact same product/price for both "RTX 5060" and
"RTX 5060 Ti" queries before this fix).
Fixed by:
- extractModelToken now appends a trailing suffix token (Ti, Super, XT,
XTX) when it immediately follows the model number, so "5060 Ti" and
"5060" are extracted as distinct tokens
- New labelMatchesModelToken() replaces the naive
label.includes(modelToken) check everywhere: a bare token ("5060") no
longer matches a label that actually has a suffix right after it
("5060 Ti"), while a suffixed token ("5060 Ti") only matches labels
carrying that exact suffix
- 9 new unit tests covering extraction and matching, including the
regression case (RTX 5060 must not match "RTX 5060 Ti" labels)
Verified fix live: LDLC/Grosbill now return correctly distinct prices for
"RTX 5060" (369.95/364.99) vs "RTX 5060 Ti" (489.95/329.99).
New manual_part_seeder_service.ts: since pc-builder.io's catalog lags
behind real product releases, this seeds a small manually-tracked list of
recent parts it doesn't carry yet (currently RTX 5060 8GB and 5060 Ti
16GB), resolving their price live from the already-supported merchants
rather than hardcoding a number that would go stale. `scrape:parts` now
runs this after the regular catalog scrape. Skips an entry rather than
inserting a guessed price if no merchant has it in stock.
Also fixes a real bug hit while testing the seeder: scraped_parts and
components.purchase_url were varchar(255), which truncates/rejects
Grosbill's long tracking-redirect URLs (500+ characters with encoded
analytics params) - both widened to TEXT via a new migration.
Idealo and PCPartPicker were evaluated and ruled out:
- idealo.fr search pages return 503 (Cloudflare)
- the internal Idealo GraphQL endpoint used by a public scraper
(app.idealo.de/app-backend/api) is protected by Akamai Bot Manager and
silently returns empty data even with mobile app headers
- PCPartPicker's product list/search relies on a session-bound CSRF token
refreshed per page load, against a scraping-hostile ToS
pc-builder.io category pages are server-rendered, include name/price/image
for ~100 products per category, and have no bot protection, so the feature
is built on top of that source only.
- New scraped_parts cache table (type_id, name, price, image_url, source,
source_url, source_ref unique per source) populated by a batch job
rather than scraped live per search, since only ~100 first results per
category are available without reverse-engineering pc-builder.io's
DataTables/CSRF pagination flow
- part_scraper_service.ts: maps our ComponentType names to pc-builder.io
category slugs (SSD -> storage, since pc-builder.io has no separate HDD
category) and parses each category page with cheerio, skipping rows
without a resolved price (generic 'search on Amazon' links)
- node ace scrape:parts: refreshes the cache for every mapped category
(upsert on source+source_ref), runnable manually or later via cron
- GET /scraped-parts (authenticated): search the cache by name (LOWER()
LIKE, avoids a MySQL utf8_bin/utf8mb4 collation mismatch from Lucid's
whereLike) and optional typeId filter
- NewPartSearch.vue: debounced search widget wired into
components/create.vue; clicking 'Import' pre-fills the existing
component creation form (name, price, type, purchase date = today)
instead of creating the Component directly, so the user still reviews
and saves it like any manually entered part
- 3 functional tests covering search by name, filter by typeId, and
unauthenticated access being redirected to login
- Initial scrape run: 989 parts across 10 categories
Kevin L'Hereec