Mercadona scraper for prices and product data

What goes into a Mercadona dataset

A Mercadona product card is short, and most of its meaning sits in the line under the name. "Garrafa 5 L", "6 latas x 80 g (60 g escurrido)", "Pieza 160 g aprox." and "Granel 200 g aprox." are four different ways of selling, so we split that line into columns instead of leaving it as text. The fields:

• Identity - product id and slug from the product address (tienda.mercadona.es/product/4241/...), URL, and the category path at three levels: category, subcategory and the headed section inside it.
• Product - display name, the brand parsed from it (Hacendado, Deliplus, Bosque Verde, Compy or a manufacturer brand) and an own-brand flag.
• Packaging - the container as the shop names it (Garrafa, Botella, Lata, Bote, Tarro, Malla, Bandeja, Granel, Pieza), net size and unit, drained weight for canned goods such as tuna, and the number of units in a pack.
• Price - current price with the unit it is quoted for (/ud., /pack or a weight such as /200 g), the previous price when the card shows "Precio anterior", and the price per kilo or price per litre that Mercadona publishes with each product.
• Selling method - per unit, per pack or sold by weight, and the "aprox." marker where the price is an estimate based on an average piece.
• Status - the Novedad badge, which Mercadona puts on products newly added or improved, and whether the product is listed in the zone at all.
• Content - product photos, whose pack shots carry the label, and for loose bakery the ingredients, allergens and nutrition from the Product information card.

One row is one product in one postcode zone at one moment, so the same product id can be compared across zones, across runs and across shop languages.

Mercadona price tracker and zone coverage

A single pass gives you a price list. The value of Mercadona data grows with every repeat and every extra zone.

• Price history. "Precio anterior" marks price drops, and the home page gathers them under Bajadas de precio, but a card never shows more than one earlier price, so repeated runs keyed on the product id are what turn snapshots into a price history - weekly for a basket of packaged goods, daily for fresh produce priced per piece.
• Zones. The shop's postcode prompt promises the assortment available in your zone, and Mercadona's own help pages note that availability limits fresh products and lines sold only locally. We run the postcodes you name and keep a zone column, so a product missing from one area shows up as a gap rather than silence.
• Aisle structure. Category and section headings, their order and the short subtitles under some of them ("Enteros o limpios" over the anchovies) come with the rows, so you see how the shop arranges an aisle.
• New and improved products. Products wearing the Novedad badge, which the shop uses for lines newly added or improved, can be delivered as a feed of their own.
• Stores. The store locator on Mercadona's corporate site finds each supermarket with its opening hours and shows which stores have the new Ready-to-Eat section; we deliver it as a separate table.