SmartCart

Price comparison engine for Irish supermarkets. Scrapes five major stores daily, matches identical products across them, and surfaces the cheapest option through a dashboard and REST API.

Stores Tracked

Store	Method
Tesco Ireland	Playwright (XHR intercept)
Dunnes Stores	Playwright (JS rendering)
SuperValu	Playwright (authenticated)
Aldi Ireland	HTTP + Playwright fallback
Lidl Ireland	HTTP + Playwright fallback

Features

Scrapers — Automated daily collection via APScheduler. Each scraper handles store-specific anti-bot measures (Akamai WAF, JS rendering, cookie walls). Raw products are normalized and persisted with full price history.

Product Matcher — Three-level cross-store matching: exact EAN barcode, fuzzy name matching (rapidfuzz) with unit-size validation, and batch singleton merging.

REST API (FastAPI) — Product listing with filters, cross-store price comparison, store battle rankings, basket cost comparison, search-prices endpoint, and admin endpoints for manual matching.

Dashboard (Next.js + shadcn/ui)

• Overview — KPI cards, cheapest store indicator, average prices by store
• Price Battle — Store vs store ranking with win percentages and category filter
• Product History — Per-product price trend charts across stores over time
• Basket Compare — Build a shopping list, compare total cost across all stores
• Product Admin — Manual merge/unlink of mismatched products, inline metadata editing

Tech Stack

Layer	Stack
Backend	Python 3.12, FastAPI, SQLAlchemy 2 (async), PostgreSQL, Alembic
Scrapers	Playwright, httpx, BeautifulSoup
Matching	rapidfuzz, custom normalizer
Frontend	Next.js 16, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui, Recharts, TanStack Query
Infra	Docker Compose (db + api + frontend)

Quick Start

# Start all services
docker compose up -d

# Or run locally
cp .env.example .env          # edit DB credentials
pip install -e ".[dev]"
alembic upgrade head
python -m src.core.seed        # seed stores & categories
uvicorn src.api.main:app --reload

# Frontend
cd frontend && npm install && npm run dev

Project Structure

src/
  api/            # FastAPI app, routers, schemas
  core/           # Config, database, ORM models
  scrapers/       # Per-store scraper implementations
  matcher/        # Cross-store product matching
  scheduler/      # APScheduler daily job
frontend/         # Next.js dashboard
tests/            # Pytest suite
alembic/          # Database migrations

Status

• Scrapers for all 5 stores
• Product matcher (EAN + fuzzy)
• REST API with comparison, battle, basket endpoints
• Next.js dashboard (5 pages)
• Product Admin (merge, edit, unlink)
• Docker Compose deployment
• Test suite
• Automated CI/CD pipeline
• User accounts & saved baskets
• Price drop notifications
• Mobile-responsive PWA