Introduction
Have you ever found yourself checking the price of an item on Amazon multiple times a week, hoping for a drop? You're not alone. Prices on Amazon can fluctuate up to eight times in a single day! Instead of manually monitoring these changes, why not build an app that does it for you? In this project, we'll create a fully functional Amazon price tracker app using React Native, Supabase, and BrightData.
Tutorial Series
This project is split into two parts:
Part 1: Building the Core Amazon Price Tracker
In the first part of this tutorial, we focus on building the core features of the Amazon price tracker app. We cover:
- Setting up React Native with Expo for the frontend
- Integrating Supabase for backend services like authentication and data storage
- Using BrightData to scrape price data from Amazon
- Building the UI for searching and displaying products
- Adding functionality to track price changes and notify users
Ready to start? Watch part 1 here.
Part 2: Advanced Features - Automatic Tracking, Price History, and Notifications
In the second part of this tutorial, we dive into more advanced features to take the app to the next level. In this part, we’ll focus on:
- Automatic Tracking: Scrape new searches automatically without needing to press a button.
- Real-Time Data Updates: Use Supabase's real-time capabilities to fetch and display data as soon as it's ready.
- Price History: Store price history and display changes over time in a graph.
- Email Notifications: Set up email alerts to notify users when a price drops on a tracked item.
These advanced features will bring the app closer to a fully functional, real-world application. Watch part 2 here.
Why This Project?
The idea came from my own experience of frequently checking Amazon for price changes. Realizing the potential for an app that tracks these fluctuations and notifies users when prices drop, I decided to go live and build one. Along the way, we'll tackle challenges like web scraping from a site that doesn't offer an API for this purpose and handling issues like captchas and IP blocking.
Key Features of the Amazon Price Tracker App
- Search and Display Products: Enter keywords to search for products on Amazon and display the results within the app.
- Track Price Changes: Select items to track, and the app will monitor their prices over time.
- Notifications: Receive alerts when the price of a tracked item drops.
- Data Scraping with BrightData: Use BrightData's Web Scraper API to reliably scrape data from Amazon without getting blocked.
Data Scraping
Scraping data from Amazon isn't straightforward—they don't provide a public API for price data, and they have measures in place to prevent scraping. Simple scripts quickly run into captchas or get blocked due to IP bans. That's where BrightData comes in. Their Web Scraper API handles captchas, IP rotation, and keeps up with website changes, allowing us to focus on building the app.
You can get $15 in free credits when you sign up for BrightData using this link.
What You Will Learn
- React Native with Expo: Build a cross-platform mobile app that works on both iOS and Android.
- Expo Router: Simplify navigation within your React Native app.
- Supabase Integration: Use Supabase for authentication, storage, and database needs.
- Web Scraping Techniques: Learn how to scrape data using BrightData's Web Scraper API.
- Real-Time Data Updates: Implement features to fetch and display live price updates.
- Notifications: Set up push notifications to alert users of price drops.
Why Use React Native and Supabase?
React Native allows us to write code once and deploy it on both iOS and Android, saving time and resources. Supabase offers a complete backend solution with authentication, storage, and real-time databases, all built on PostgreSQL. This combination accelerates development and provides a robust foundation for our app.
Conclusion
Building this Amazon price tracker app is not just about creating a useful tool for monitoring price changes. It's an opportunity to dive deeper into modern mobile app development, learn about overcoming challenges in web scraping, and understand how to build scalable and efficient applications.
Ready to start building? Open up the tutorial in a new tab, follow along with the video, and let's get started!
Join the Community
If you found this project interesting, consider subscribing to our YouTube channel and joining the notJust Development community. We regularly post live tutorials where we build real-world applications together.
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Thanks for being a part of our community, and happy coding!
