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The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) publishes a public license lookup at apps.tabc.texas.gov/publicinquiry. It’s an ASP.NET WebForms application behind an image CAPTCHA on every submission. NexusFeed solves the CAPTCHA server-side via 2Captcha, drives the form in headless Chromium, captures the results popup, and parses the DOM — all in a single request.

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State overview

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How the CAPTCHA pipeline works

1

Load the form in headless Chromium

NexusFeed opens the TABC public inquiry page and waits for the CAPTCHA image element to render.
2

Fetch the CAPTCHA as base64

A page.evaluate(fetch('/publicinquiry/Captcha.aspx')) call downloads the CAPTCHA image directly inside the page context — this preserves the ASP.NET session cookie that the image is bound to. Fetching the image from the server side would produce a mismatched session and an incorrect solve.
3

Send to 2Captcha

The base64 image is posted to 2Captcha’s method=base64 endpoint. Typical solve time is 5-15 seconds. Cost is roughly $1-3 per 1,000 solves.
4

Submit the form

The solved text is typed into the CAPTCHA field along with the search parameters, and the form is submitted. TABC opens a results popup.
5

Capture the popup and parse

Playwright captures the popup page via page.context.expect_page() and NexusFeed parses the result DOM into structured records.
TX endpoints require TWOCAPTCHA_API_KEY to be configured on the server. If it isn’t, the API returns:
Production deployments always have a 2Captcha key active. This only matters if you are self-hosting NexusFeed.

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Search example

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Lookup example

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Performance note

TX requests are slower than other states because the CAPTCHA solve adds 5-15 seconds to the round-trip. NexusFeed caches results aggressively (24 hours) so repeat lookups do not incur the CAPTCHA cost. The first request for a given query takes a few seconds; subsequent cached requests return in tens of milliseconds.

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Texas license types (most common)

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Use cases

  • Verifying a Texas bar, restaurant, or retailer holds an active TABC license.
  • Onboarding Texas liquor distributor accounts.
  • Compliance checks against current license status and expiration.
  • Due diligence during Texas hospitality business transactions.