patternModerate
Merchbar Typesense API: Direct product search via public API keys
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merchbartypesenseproduct scrapingnext datareversed slugbrand search
Problem
Merchbar pages are JS-rendered (Next.js + Algolia/Typesense), making traditional HTML scraping return empty product lists. urllib/WebFetch cannot get product data from merchbar.com artist pages because products are loaded client-side.
Solution
Merchbar exposes Typesense search credentials in __NEXT_DATA__ JSON under runtimeConfig. Extract TYPESENSE_HOST (typesense.merchbar.com), TYPESENSE_SEARCH_API_KEY from any Merchbar page. Collections: 'merch' (1.3M products), 'brands' (1.3M brands). Use POST /multi_search with collection 'brands' to find brandID, then search 'merch' collection with filter_by 'brandID:{id}'. Brand pages also contain 'relatedMerch' array in pageProps with full product data (price, image, href, variants). Note: Merchbar uses reversed name slugs for some artists (e.g., 'miguel-luis' not 'luis-miguel', 'tiller-bryson' not 'bryson-tiller').
Why
Merchbar is a Next.js app that loads product data via Typesense search after initial page render. The __NEXT_DATA__ script tag contains runtimeConfig with Typesense credentials, and pageProps contains relatedMerch items and brand configuration including brandID filter strings.
Gotchas
- Some artists use reversed name slugs (miguel-luis, tiller-bryson)
- Brands may exist in Typesense but have 0 indexed products
- relatedMerch in pageProps may contain products from OTHER related artists, not the page artist
Code Snippets
Extract Typesense credentials and search for products
import urllib.request, json, re
# Get Typesense creds from any Merchbar page
req = urllib.request.Request('https://www.merchbar.com/pop/artist-slug', headers={'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0'})
html = urllib.request.urlopen(req).read().decode()
match = re.search(r'<script id="__NEXT_DATA__"[^>]*>(.*?)</script>', html)
data = json.loads(match.group(1))
rc = data['runtimeConfig']
host, key = rc['TYPESENSE_HOST'], rc['TYPESENSE_SEARCH_API_KEY']
# Search brands collection
search = json.dumps({'searches': [{'collection': 'brands', 'q': 'Artist Name', 'query_by': 'name', 'per_page': 5}]}).encode()
req = urllib.request.Request(f'https://{host}/multi_search', data=search, headers={'X-TYPESENSE-API-KEY': key, 'Content-Type': 'application/json'})
result = json.loads(urllib.request.urlopen(req).read())Context
When scraping merchandise data from Merchbar for artists who don't have Shopify/Bandcamp stores. Useful as a universal merch aggregator.
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