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 — run them from any HTTP client. Under restricted egress, route via browserless_function: because it runs in a browser page context (bare fetch has no egress until the page navigates), page.goto('https://www.ifm.com/') first, then page.evaluate(async () => fetch('/restservices/us/en/...').then(r => r.json())) (same-origin). The bare ifm homepage returns 403 to naive clients, so if a raw fetch is blocked add proxy: { proxy: "residential" } for resilience — though the REST endpoints themselves returned 200 even without a proxy 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. Drive it with a single browserless_agent call (the homepage is behind Akamai and returns 403 to unstealthed clients; add proxy: { proxy: "residential" } on the call if a plain session gets blocked). Keep the whole flow in one call's commands array:

1. { "method": "goto", "params": { "url": "https://www.ifm.com/us/en/product/{ARTICLE}", "waitUntil": "load", "timeout": 45000 } }, then { "method": "waitForTimeout", "params": { "time": 5000 } } (let the SPA hydrate). Never use networkidle.
2. Dismiss the Usercentrics cookie banner — it lives in a shadow DOM, so a { "method": "click", "params": { "selector": "button" } } won't find "Accept All". Click it by coordinate instead (roughly x=905, y=667 at a 1288×711 viewport) via an evaluate that dispatches a click at those coordinates, or { "method": "click", "params": { "x": 905, "y": 667 } }; confirm via snapshot if the coordinate misses.
3. The page lazy-loads the spec table when the "Technical details" tab is in view. { "method": "text", "params": { "selector": "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 via an evaluate.
4. Note the rendered page reaches the same /restservices/.../datasheetTab/{ARTICLE} XHR — confirm the endpoint from inside an evaluate 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. A browserless_function fetch (with or without a residential proxy) reached both the product HTML and the REST JSON at 200 in testing; the browserless_agent browser fallback loads the SPA reliably as a plain stealth session, and can add proxy: { proxy: "residential" } if blocked. Add a residential proxy to REST fetches for resilience if a raw fetch is refused.
• 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"
}