ScraperControl/docs/plans/2026-03-01-weekdaymasses-importer-design.md

weekdaymasses.org.uk Global Importer

Context

weekdaymasses.org.uk is a UK-based Catholic directory covering ~3,500-4,000 churches globally with mass schedules, coordinates, addresses, and phone numbers. Covers GB, Ireland, and 49+ international countries (India, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Japan, and more). All data served on single HTML pages per area — no pagination or API needed.

Data Source

Three area pages cover the entire site:

Page	URL	Est. Churches
GB	/en/area/gb/churches	~3,000+
Ireland	/en/area/ireland/churches	~300+
Outside GB	/en/area/outside-gb/churches	~152+

Individual country/region pages (e.g. /en/area/india/churches) are subsets of these three.

Data per church

• Name: h3 heading, format "Church Name (Location)"
• Address: plain text after mass times, with postal/zip code
• Coordinates: in map link query params lat=XX.XXXX&lon=YY.YYYY&church_id=NNNNN
• Mass times: format Day: HH.MMam/pm(Language), HH.MMam/pm(Language)
• Phone: Tel: +XX XXXX XXXXXX
• Website: occasional links
• church_id: unique numeric identifier in map links

Mass time format

Sunday: 6.30am(Tamil), 8.30am(Tamil), 5.30pm(English)
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri: 6.30am(Tamil)
Saturday: 6.30am(Tamil), 5.30pm(English)

Day labels: Sunday, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Saturday, or combinations like Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri. Also Holy Day entries.

Time format: H.MMam/pm — needs conversion to 24h HH:MM.

Language in parentheses maps to our language field on mass_schedules.

Country detection

The address is the last line of each church entry. Country can be detected by:

• GB: UK postal code pattern (e.g. SW1A 1AA)
• Ireland: Irish Eircode (e.g. D01 F5P2) or "Ireland" in address
• India: 6-digit postal code (e.g. 600088)
• Others: country name at end of address, or fallback to the area page being scraped

Design

Schema

Add to Church model in both BethelGuide and ScraperControl:

weekdayMassesId String? @unique @map("weekday_masses_id")
@@index([weekdayMassesId])

Script: scripts/import-weekdaymasses.ts

Single script that:

1. Fetches area pages (default: all 3; filterable with --area gb|ireland|outside-gb|india|...)
2. Parses HTML into structured church entries
3. Converts mass times from H.MMam/pm to HH:MM 24h format
4. Detects country from address patterns
5. Matches against existing churches by weekdayMassesId (exact) then proximity+name
6. Upserts churches and replaces mass schedules

HTML parsing strategy

Each church is a block between consecutive h3 headings. Within each block:

• h3 content = church name
• Lines with day labels + times = mass schedule
• Map link = coordinates + church_id
• Last text block before next h3 = address
• Tel: prefix = phone

CLI flags

• --all — import all 3 area pages
• --area <name> — import specific area (gb, ireland, outside-gb, india, sri-lanka, etc.)
• --dry-run — no database writes
• --resume-from <n> — skip first N churches
• --job-id <uuid> — background job tracking

Church matcher integration

Add weekdayMassesId to ExistingChurch, ChurchCandidate, and a new match pass in findDuplicateChurch().

Scheduler integration

Add weekdaymasses-import to the sequential imports group in the pipeline, with getJobCommand() case and npm script.

Scope

• ~3,500-4,000 churches with mass schedules
• Most GB/Ireland churches already in DB from OSM (will match and add schedules)
• India/Sri Lanka/international churches partially in DB from OSM/gcatholic
• Value: mass schedule data for thousands of churches that currently have none