il-reviews-show

Show AliExpress Reviews from Israel

Filter the reviews on an AliExpress product page down to those left by Israeli buyers and return them in a structured form.

Why this matters

AliExpress aggregates reviews globally. For an Israel-based buyer, only the IL-tagged reviews are signal — they confirm:

• The product actually shipped to IL (not just "free shipping" theatre)
• Realistic IL delivery times in lived experience
• Whether the variant the buyer wants has been bought locally before
• IL-specific issues (plug type, voltage, manuals, customs experience) that global reviews miss

Inputs

• url (required) — full AliExpress product URL (https://he.aliexpress.com/item/<id>.html or .aliexpress.com/item/<id>.html).
• max_reviews (optional, default: all) — cap on number of IL reviews to extract.
• translate_hebrew (optional, default false) — if a review body is in Hebrew, also include an English gloss.

Locale prerequisite

Site must be in IL/Hebrew/ILS (see search-aliexpress skill for the cookie handshake — aep_usuc_f.c_tp=ILS, b_locale=iw_IL). The IL chip appears regardless of locale, but timestamps render per b_locale and need to be parsed accordingly.

Locating the IL filter chip

The review-filter strip lives below the reviews header. Each chip is a <div> whose class starts with filter--filterItem--. The Israel chip carries a child <span> whose class list contains some country-flag-* versioned class plus the bare ISO-2 IL. As of capture date the versioned class is country-flag-y2023, but the -y2023 suffix telegraphs that AliExpress versions this sprite — anchor on the prefix, not the year. Validated in research/ui-selectors/product-page-review-filters.md.

Robust selector — version-agnostic, won't break when AliExpress rolls country-flag-y2024 / country-flag-v2 / etc.:

const ilChip = document.querySelector('[class*="country-flag-"].IL')
                  ?.closest('[class*="filter--filterItem--"]');

Do not anchor on the literal country-flag-y2023 — it will break on the next sprite roll. The [class*="country-flag-"] substring + the IL ISO class together are the stable pair: any country-flag-* class with the IL co-class.

Pre-flight checks

1. Reviews section exists: [class*="title--wrap--"] is present. If not, the listing has no reviews at all — report and stop.

2. IL chip exists: [class*="country-flag-"].IL is in the DOM. If absent, no reviews from Israel exist for this product — report 0 IL reviews and stop. Do not invent any.

3. IL chip is not invalid: the wrapper does not carry [class*="filter--invalid--"]. (An invalid chip would render with (0) and be non-clickable — but in practice if the count is 0 the chip won't appear at all on most builds.)

4. Read the IL count from the chip text, e.g. (1):

   const m = ilChip?.textContent.match(/\((\d+)\)/);
   const ilCount = m ? parseInt(m[1], 10) : 0;
   

Applying the filter

Click the chip wrapper (not the inner flag span):

ilChip.click();

Then verify the chip flipped to active:

ilChip.matches('[class*="filter--active--"]');   // → true

Wait for the review list to re-render (network idle, or wait for the list container to mutate). The reviews header copy ("7 ratings", etc.) does not change after filtering — only the list below filters. Don't gate on the header.

Expanding the list

If a View more button is present at the bottom of the review list, click it repeatedly until either:

• It disappears, or
• max_reviews IL reviews have been collected.

Selector (locale-dependent text):

const btn = [...document.querySelectorAll('[class*="v3--btn--"]')]
  .find(b => /view more|טען עוד|הצג עוד/i.test(b.textContent));

Per-review extraction

Each review is a [class*="list--itemBox--"]. Extract:

Field	Selector (relative to the item box)
stars (1–5)	[class*="stars--box--"] .comet-icon-starreviewfilled → count
variant / SKU	[class*="list--itemSku--"] (e.g. Color:black, Size:M)
review body	[class*="list--itemReview--"] — may be empty (star-only)
customer photos	[class*="list--itemThumbnails--"] img → src array
product thumb	[class*="list--itemPhoto--"] img → src
username + date	[class*="list--itemInfo--"] span — split on `
helpful count	[class*="list--itemHelpText--"] → \((\d+)\)

Caveats baked into the parser

• Usernames are masked — AliExpress shows AliExpress Shopper (or its locale equivalent) for everyone. Do not present this as the reviewer's identity.
• Empty review bodies are normal. Detect with textContent.trim().length === 0 and tag as star-only.
• Date locale: with b_locale=iw_IL, dates render in Hebrew (e.g. 11 בפבר׳ 2026). Parse defensively; if parsing fails, return the raw string.
• Variant facets: <facet>:<value>[, <facet>:<value>]… — preserve as-is, don't try to normalise.

Output format

Product: <title>
URL: <url>
IL reviews: <N>   (chip count: <chip_count>)
Average rating (all locales): <X.X>   ← from header, not IL-filtered

For each IL review:
─────────────────────────────────────
[★★★★★]  variant: <Color:black, Size:M>
date: <YYYY-MM-DD or raw>          helpful: <N>
photos: <count>  thumbs: [<urls>]
review:
  <body or "(star-only — no text)">
─────────────────────────────────────

If translate_hebrew=true and a review body is Hebrew, append an English gloss block after the original.

Failure modes

• No IL chip on the page → 0 IL reviews, stop.
• Chip click doesn't activate (filter--active--* doesn't appear) → wait once more, then report inability to apply filter and bail.
• Captcha / risk challenge → report and stop; do not retry in a loop.
• Page structure changed (selectors return nothing) → report which selector failed and stop, so the research notes can be updated.

Out of scope

• Does not translate reviews automatically unless translate_hebrew=true is set.
• Does not rank reviews or compute a derived "IL sentiment score" — just returns them.
• Does not filter by stars, photos, or text-only — those are separate chips in the same strip and outside this skill.

Validation checklist

1. URL is a valid AliExpress /item/<id>.html.
2. IL chip count was read from the DOM before filtering.
3. After click, the IL chip carries [class*="filter--active--"].
4. Number of extracted reviews ≤ chip count (with "View more" expansion if needed).
5. Each extracted review has a star count, date, and variant fields populated (or explicitly null if absent).