Chasing Down a Weekly Data Script (and What We Learned Along the Way)

September 1, 2025

We blocked off a day to solve what seemed like a simple problem: “Let’s have our USDA data script run automatically once a week.” Why, so we can ensure the data is always the most current and up-to-date.

How hard could that be? Turns out, it was one of those days where every step forward came with a detour.

What We Tried

  • First attempt: a quick cron job in our local environment.
    Looked good on paper, but quickly ran into permission and path issues. Local dev ≠ production automation.

  • Second attempt: wiring it into GitHub Actions.
    We spent a while learning the right YAML incantations (on: schedule: syntax, cron expressions). It built, it triggered… but no data actually landed where we needed it.

  • Third attempt: testing curl against the USDA endpoint directly.
    The endpoint itself was flaky — sometimes timing out, sometimes throwing 500 errors. So we weren’t just fighting our own config; the data source wasn’t always cooperative.

  • Fourth attempt: running the script manually on different hosts.
    Locally, it worked fine. On GitHub, it worked sometimes. On our hosting environment, it stalled. We slowly realized this wasn’t a coding bug at all.

What We Discovered

The “aha” moment came late in the day:

  • The government’s SSL certificate was misconfigured.
    Our script was failing not because of our YAML or cron, but because the data server’s HTTPS handshake wasn’t valid. A certificate chain problem on their side was breaking automation on our side.

Manually, we could force-ignore the SSL check and pull the file. But for scheduled, unattended jobs, that’s not an ideal long-term fix. It left us in a strange spot: our code was fine, our automation was fine, but the official data source itself wasn’t fully reliable.

How It Felt

It was one of those days where you drink more coffee than you planned and start questioning if you should’ve just gone to the farmers market with a clipboard instead. Every time we thought we nailed the problem, a new layer appeared. But we also walked away with some hard-earned knowledge:

  • Automations are only as reliable as the weakest link — and sometimes that’s the data provider.
  • Debugging is often about ruling out what’s not broken.
  • And yes, even government servers forget to renew SSL certificates.

Next Steps

  • We’ll keep a manual override in place while we wait for the USDA team to sort out their SSL chain.
  • Meanwhile, we’ll explore caching strategies and maybe a mirror, so our app doesn’t choke when their server does.
  • And since we’ve already lived through one “all-day script debugging marathon,” we’ll write up the playbook so the next time it happens, we’re ready.

👉 Up next: we’re going to refine our map interface, bringing back search and filter features so people can actually find markets nearby (instead of just staring at pins). But that’s another story.