Pokemon Discovery (pokemon-disco)

A comprehensive tool for discovering Pokemon Trading Card Game products from Dollar General's website and generating a professional PDF catalog with product images, details, and UPC-A barcodes.

Features

• Web Scraping: Automatically scrapes Pokemon TCG products from Dollar General
• Robust Data Extraction: Extracts product name, price, stock status, SKU, and images
• Anti-Bot Handling: Uses both requests and Selenium for dynamic content
• Barcode Generation: Creates UPC-A barcodes for each product SKU
• PDF Catalog: Professional PDF with images, details, and barcodes
• Unix-Friendly Naming: Timestamped filenames for easy sorting

Requirements

System Requirements

• Python 3.7+
• pandoc (for PDF generation)
• Chrome/Chromium browser (for Selenium fallback)

Python Dependencies

All dependencies are automatically installed via requirements.txt:

• requests
• beautifulsoup4
• selenium
• webdriver-manager
• python-barcode
• Pillow
• pandas
• lxml

Installation

1. Clone/Download this directory to your system

2. Install pandoc (required for PDF generation):

   # Ubuntu/Debian
   sudo apt install pandoc
   
   # macOS
   brew install pandoc
   
   # Arch Linux
   sudo pacman -S pandoc
   

3. Install Python dependencies (automatically done by the script):

   cd pokemon-disco
   pip3 install -r requirements.txt
   

Usage

Quick Start (Recommended)

Run the complete pipeline with one command:

cd pokemon-disco
python3 run_scraper.py

This will:

1. Check and install Python requirements
2. Scrape Pokemon TCG products from Dollar General
3. Generate a PDF catalog with images and barcodes
4. Create timestamped files for easy organization

Manual Usage

If you prefer to run components separately:

1. Scrape Products

python3 scraper.py

This creates a JSON file like pokemon_tcg_products_20241221_143025.json

2. Generate PDF Catalog

python3 pdf_generator.py pokemon_tcg_products_20241221_143025.json

Output Files

Generated Files

• JSON Data: pokemon_tcg_products_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.json

  • Raw scraped data in JSON format
  • Contains all product information

• PDF Catalog: catalog_output/pokemon_tcg_catalog_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.pdf

  • Professional PDF catalog
  • Includes product images, details, and UPC-A barcodes

Output Directory Structure

pokemon-disco/
├── pokemon_tcg_products_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.json
├── catalog_output/
│   ├── pokemon_tcg_catalog_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.pdf
│   ├── pokemon_tcg_catalog_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.md
│   ├── images/
│   │   ├── product_1_SKU123.jpg
│   │   ├── product_2_SKU456.jpg
│   │   └── placeholder.png
│   └── barcodes/
│       ├── barcode_SKU123.png
│       ├── barcode_SKU456.png
│       └── ...

PDF Catalog Features

Each product in the PDF includes:

• Product Image: Downloaded from Dollar General or placeholder
• Product Details Table:
  • Title
  • Price
  • Stock Status
  • SKU (formatted as code)
  • Product URL
• UPC-A Barcode: Generated from SKU for inventory management

Data Fields Extracted

For each Pokemon TCG product:

• title: Product name
• price: Current price
• stock: Availability status
• sku: Product SKU/item number
• image_url: Direct link to product image
• url: Link to product page

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

1. No products found

   • Dollar General may have anti-bot protection
   • The script will automatically retry with Selenium
   • Website structure may have changed

2. PDF generation fails

   • Ensure pandoc is installed: pandoc --version
   • Try alternative LaTeX engines if available
   • Markdown file is still generated for manual conversion

3. Image download failures

   • Network connectivity issues
   • Placeholder images will be used automatically

4. Browser/Selenium issues

   • Brave browser supported: Configured to use Brave at /usr/bin/brave
   • ChromeDriver compatibility: May require version matching (Brave 146 vs ChromeDriver 114)
   • Alternative browsers: Chrome, Chromium, or Firefox with geckodriver
   • Script falls back to requests-only mode if Selenium fails

   For Brave users: If you see ChromeDriver version mismatch:

   # Test browser integration
   python test_brave.py
   
   # Solutions for version mismatch:
   pip install --upgrade webdriver-manager
   # or manually install compatible ChromeDriver
   

Debug Mode

To see more detailed output, check the console output during scraping. The scripts provide detailed logging of:

• Which products are found and filtered
• Network request status
• File generation progress

Technical Details

Scraping Strategy

1. Primary Method: Uses requests with browser-like headers
2. Fallback Method: Selenium with headless Chrome for dynamic content
3. Product Filtering: Only includes products matching Pokemon TCG keywords
4. Rate Limiting: 1-second delay between requests to be respectful

Barcode Generation

• Converts SKUs to 11-digit numeric format
• Generates UPC-A barcodes with check digits
• High-quality PNG images suitable for printing

PDF Generation

• Uses pandoc with LaTeX for professional formatting
• Includes table of contents
• Optimized for printing and digital viewing
• Images scaled appropriately for page layout

Customization

Modifying Product Filters

Edit the is_pokemon_tcg_product() method in scraper.py to change which products are included.

Changing PDF Layout

Modify the markdown generation in pdf_generator.py or add custom pandoc templates.

Adding New Data Fields

Extend the extract_product_info() method in scraper.py to capture additional product information.

License

This tool is for educational and personal use. Please respect Dollar General's terms of service and robots.txt when using this scraper.

Support

If you encounter issues:

1. Check the console output for error messages
2. Ensure all system requirements are installed
3. Verify internet connectivity
4. Check if the Dollar General website structure has changed

Generated files include timestamps for easy organization and version tracking.