n8n Workflow: Validate Apify Supplier Price Comparisons

Validate Apify Supplier Price Comparisons (Download Clean CSV + Diagnostics)

This manual n8n workflow starts or resumes an Apify “Supplier Catalog Comparison” actor run, waits for it to finish, then validates the downloaded outputs—exporting a validated COMPARISON.csv plus a DIAGNOSTICS.json report for downstream processing.

What this workflow does

Designed for n8n users and automation engineers, this workflow automates the critical “trust-but-verify” step after an Apify supplier price comparison completes:

• Run control & settings: Loads comparison settings and defaults to resuming an existing Apify actor run ID.
• Validation before execution: Validates the provided settings and either continues with the provided run ID or starts a single new Apify run only when explicitly confirmed.
• Polling for completion: Checks the Apify actor run status up to 18 times, waiting 10 seconds between checks while the run is in progress.
• Fetch Apify outputs: Once successful, downloads SUMMARY, REVIEW (JSON records) and COMPARISON.csv from the actor run’s Apify key-value store.
• Output verification: Validates status codes, row counts, required CSV headers, CSV formatting, and size limits—then flags common data risks.
• Downloads for you: Exports COMPARISON.csv and DIAGNOSTICS.json as binary attachments.

Use cases

• Resume a paused or previously started Apify supplier comparison and quickly confirm the CSV is ready for imports.
• Catch issues early (missing headers, malformed CSV, unexpected row counts) before loading price data into your SaaS pipeline.
• Provide operators with a DIAGNOSTICS.json audit trail for repeatable price comparison results.

Technical details

• Integration: Apify via n8n HTTP Request using an Apify HTTP Header Auth credential (e.g., Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>).
• Workflow nodes: if, code, no op, wait, sticky note, http request.
• Outputs: validated COMPARISON.csv and DIAGNOSTICS.json for downstream automation.