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explore-products-specs

Installation

Adds this website's skill for your agents

 

Summary

Discover ifm sensors/automation products by search and retrieve full technical specifications (datasheet attributes) for any article number via ifm's public REST API, with a browser fallback.

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SKILL.md
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ifm Products & Technical Specifications Explorer

Purpose

Discover ifm electronic products (sensors, IO-Link devices, connectors, controllers, accessories) and retrieve their full technical specifications. ifm's public website (www.ifm.com) is a Vue single-page app that hydrates entirely from an unauthenticated REST API at /restservices/{country}/{lang}/…. This skill leads with that API: a search call to find product article numbers, then per-article calls for product metadata and the complete datasheet (every spec attribute, grouped into sections, with units). Read-only — no login, cart, or order actions.

When to Use

  • Look up the full technical datasheet for a known ifm article number (e.g. PN2043, TN7531, O5D100).
  • Search the catalog for products matching a query ("pressure sensor", "IO-Link master") and return the matching article numbers + headlines.
  • Bulk-extract specs across many products (the API is faster, cheaper, and structurally cleaner than scraping the rendered page).
  • Compare spec attributes across a product family or category.
  • Anywhere you'd otherwise drive the ifm SPA UI to read a spec table — the REST JSON is the same data the UI renders.

Workflow

Optimal path = direct REST calls. The product page's raw HTML is a shell — it does not contain spec values (confirmed: a static fetch of /us/en/product/PN2043 has no "Measuring range", "Operating voltage", etc.). Those values hydrate client-side from /restservices/.... Hit that API directly and skip the browser entirely.

Base path: https://www.ifm.com/restservices/{cc}/{lang}/ where {cc} is the lowercase country code and {lang} the language (e.g. us/en, de/de, gb/en, fr/fr). Use us/en for the US English catalog.

All calls are plain HTTPS GET, return application/json, and need no auth, cookies, or token. In a Browserbase sandbox use browse cloud fetch <url> --proxies (a residential proxy is recommended for reliability — the bare ifm homepage returns 403 to naive clients — though the REST endpoints themselves returned 200 even without proxies in testing).

  1. Find products (search).

    GET /restservices/us/en/search?q={url-encoded query}

    Returns: resultList[] (default ~12 product hits), productCount (total products matching, e.g. 1420), solutionCount, otherCount (accessories/downloads), and facetResult.facets[] for drill-down. Each resultList[] item carries id (the article number, e.g. PN7094), productHeadline (display name, e.g. "Pressure sensor with display"), url (/us/en/product/{id}), shortDescription, bulletPoints[], searchResultType ("product"), gtin, and an image URL. Use id for the detail/datasheet calls below.

  2. Get product metadata.

    GET /restservices/us/en/productdetail/{ARTICLE}

    Returns the product header object: title (= article number), productHeadline (descriptive name — this, not title, is the human-readable product name), shortDescription, bulletPoints[], productType (the long ifm type string, e.g. PN-040-SER14-MFRKG/US/ /V), gtin, countryOfOrigin, ioLinkUri, variantIds[]/variants[], hasAccessories, and image URLs. Note price/formattedPrice are usually null (US list/customer prices require a logged-in my-ifm session — see gotchas).

  3. Get the full technical specifications (datasheet).

    GET /restservices/us/en/productdetail/datasheetTab/{ARTICLE}

    This is the core call. Returns:

    • datasheetResultDocument.datasheetSections[] — ordered spec sections. Each section has sectionName (e.g. "Product characteristics", "Electrical data", "Measuring/setting range", "Operating conditions", "Tests / approvals", "Mechanical data") and datasheetSubSectionList[], each holding dataSheetAttributesList[].
    • Every attribute is { "name": "Measuring range", "value": "0...40 bar", "uom": "", "type": "string", "key": "at_...", "valueList": null, "tableValue": null }. Multi-unit values (bar/psi/MPa) may appear as separate adjacent attributes with the same name.
    • defaultPdfDatasheetUrl — direct link to the official PDF datasheet.
    • scaleDrawingUrl / scaleDrawingRef — dimensional drawing image.
    • certificateImages[], connections, diagramSections, freeTableSection, footerAddress, footerDate, madeInRemark. To flatten: iterate datasheetSections → datasheetSubSectionList → dataSheetAttributesList and collect {section, name, value, uom}.

  4. (Optional) Related sub-resources — same productdetail/{tab}/{ARTICLE} pattern, all JSON:

    • productdetail/variants/{ARTICLE} — variant list.
    • productdetail/accessories/{ARTICLE} — compatible accessories.
    • productdetail/pdfDatasheets/{ARTICLE} — datasheet PDFs in all languages.
    • availability/{ARTICLE}/availability/1/ST?includeStock=true — stock/availability.

Browser fallback

Only if the REST host ever starts blocking direct fetches. Use a Browserbase session created with --verified --proxies (the homepage is behind Akamai and returns 403 to unstealthed clients):

  1. browse open https://www.ifm.com/us/en/product/{ARTICLE} --remote then browse wait timeout 5000 (let the SPA hydrate).
  2. Dismiss the Usercentrics cookie banner — it lives in a shadow DOM, so querySelector('button') won't find "Accept All"; click it by coordinates (browse mouse click 905 667 at 1288×711) instead.
  3. The page lazy-loads the spec table when the "Technical details" tab is in view. browse get text body returns the entire rendered datasheet inline (section headers + name/value pairs), even before manual scrolling. Parse the text, or click the "Technical details" tab and read the rendered <table>s.
  4. Note the rendered page reaches the same /restservices/.../datasheetTab/{ARTICLE} XHR — confirm the endpoint via performance.getEntriesByType('resource') if you need to rediscover it.

Site-Specific Gotchas

  • The product page HTML has NO spec data. /us/en/product/{ART} is a Vue SPA shell; specs hydrate from /restservices/.../datasheetTab/{ART}. Don't parse the static product HTML for specs — it only has <meta>/og: tags and the JS bundle. Hit the REST API.
  • title ≠ product name. In productdetail/{ART}, title is just the article number ("PN2043"). The human-readable name ("Pressure sensor with display") is in productHeadline. The verbose ifm catalog type string is productType.
  • Locale is in the path, not a header. {cc}/{lang} (e.g. us/en) selects catalog, language, units, and price region. de/de, gb/en, fr/fr, etc. all work. The same article returns localized spec strings per locale.
  • robots.txt disallows many locales' indexable pages and query-string category URLs (Disallow: /*/*/category/*/*/*?*, plus most non-US/non-DE /{cc}/en/ trees), but explicitly Allows ClaudeBot / GPTBot / anthropic-ai / CCBot. The /restservices/ API is not disallowed. us/en and de/en are crawlable.
  • Search returns only ~12 results per call and there is no working offset/page param. productCount/hits report the true total (e.g. 1420), but page=, offset=, pageSize=, p=, count= all returned HTTP 503 in testing — do not rely on them. To enumerate a full category, either (a) narrow the query / use facetResult.facets[] buckets (e.g. productProgram → Sensors/Accessories with counts) to slice the result set, or (b) pull article numbers from the locale sitemap (see below).
  • Sitemap = the bulk product index. https://www.ifm.com/us/en/sitemap.xml lists ~10,450 /us/en/product/{ARTICLE} URLs and ~800 /us/en/category/{HIERARCHICAL_ID} URLs (IDs like 200_010_020_010_010). This is the most reliable way to enumerate every article number; the per-product REST calls then fetch metadata + specs. Other Sitemaps are listed in robots.txt (one per locale).
  • There is no restservices/.../category/{id} JSON endpoint — /restservices/us/en/category/230 returns 404. Category browsing is done via the SPA /{cc}/{lang}/category/{id} pages or via search + facets, not a clean category REST call.
  • Prices are usually null in the API. productdetail.price / formattedPrice came back null for US; the rendered search UI shows a "List price" but "Your price" requires a logged-in my-ifm account. Treat pricing as out of scope / login-gated.
  • Multi-unit spec values are duplicated, not nested. A pressure range appears as three sibling attributes (0...40 bar, 0...580 psi, 0...4 MPa) all named "Measuring range", rather than one attribute with a unit array. Group by name if you need them merged.
  • Homepage/anti-bot: the bare www.ifm.com homepage is behind Akamai and returned 403 to the pre-run probe. browse cloud fetch (with or without --proxies) reached both the product HTML and the REST JSON at 200 in testing; the browser fallback needs --verified --proxies to load the SPA reliably. Recommend --proxies on REST fetches for resilience.
  • Cookie banner is in a shadow DOM (Usercentrics) and sets overflowHidden on <body>, blocking scroll until dismissed. Only relevant to the browser fallback — click "Accept All" by coordinates, then clear the class / set body.style.overflow='auto'.

Expected Output

Recommended shape after combining search + productdetail + datasheetTab:

{
  "article": "PN2043",
  "name": "Pressure sensor with display",
  "type": "PN-040-SER14-MFRKG/US/ /V",
  "url": "https://www.ifm.com/us/en/product/PN2043",
  "gtin": "4021179320511",
  "country_of_origin": "RO",
  "bullet_points": [
    "Two switching outputs, one of them programmable as IO-Link and one as analog output",
    "Red/green display for clear identification of the acceptable range",
    "The process connection can be rotated for optimum alignment"
  ],
  "datasheet_pdf": "https://media.ifm.com/dam/.../PN2043-00_EN-US.pdf",
  "scale_drawing": "https://media.ifm.com/dam/.../P_MZ_500_0139.png",
  "specifications": [
    { "section": "Product characteristics", "name": "Number of inputs and outputs", "value": "Number of digital outputs: 2; Number of analog outputs: 1", "uom": "" },
    { "section": "Product characteristics", "name": "Measuring range", "value": "0...40 bar", "uom": "" },
    { "section": "Product characteristics", "name": "Measuring range", "value": "0...580 psi", "uom": "" },
    { "section": "Product characteristics", "name": "Process connection", "value": "threaded connection G 1/4 Internal thread (DIN EN ISO 1179-2)", "uom": "" },
    { "section": "Electrical data", "name": "Operating voltage", "value": "18...30 DC; (to SELV/PELV)", "uom": "V" },
    { "section": "Operating conditions", "name": "Ambient temperature", "value": "-25...80", "uom": "°C" },
    { "section": "Mechanical data", "name": "Weight", "value": "282.5", "uom": "g" }
  ],
  "section_names": [
    "Product characteristics", "Application", "Electrical data", "Inputs / outputs",
    "Outputs", "Measuring/setting range", "Accuracy / deviations", "Reaction times",
    "Software / programming", "Interfaces", "Operating conditions", "Tests / approvals",
    "Mechanical data", "Displays / operating elements", "Remarks", "Electrical connection"
  ]
}

Search-result shape (GET /restservices/us/en/search?q=pressure+sensor):

{
  "productCount": 1420,
  "solutionCount": 98,
  "otherCount": 0,
  "hits": 1846,
  "resultList": [
    {
      "id": "PN7094",
      "productHeadline": "Pressure sensor with display",
      "url": "/us/en/product/PN7094",
      "searchResultType": "product",
      "shortDescription": "Electronic pressure sensor; -1...10 bar; ...",
      "bulletPoints": ["..."],
      "gtin": "..."
    }
  ],
  "facetResult": {
    "facets": [
      { "type": "CSETermsFacet", "name": "productProgram",
        "buckets": [ { "label": "Sensors", "count": 1064 }, { "label": "Accessories", "count": 329 } ] }
    ]
  }
}

Not-found / bad article (productdetail or datasheetTab for an unknown article) returns an RFC-7807 problem document:

{ "title": "Not Found", "status": 404, "detail": "HTTP 404 Not Found", "instance": "/site/restservices/us/en/category/230" }