taz8057
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posted on April 18, 2001 04:28:14 PM new
Hi, I was surfing on the internet and saw something about bots.
Does anyone know anything about them? I would like to use a bot to get my info from ebay (bidder email address and amount) and use it to send them an email.
The AW auction manager seems to use this idea, and I wanted to know how to do it.
-Trey
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"If your mind can conceive it, and you believe it, then you probably can achieve it."
http://www.CondomDeals.com
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eventer
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posted on April 18, 2001 04:48:07 PM new
No, but I watch BattleBots every Tuesday evening on Comedy Channel!
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joycel
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posted on April 18, 2001 08:18:35 PM new
Out here in the west, Bots are little flies that lay yellow eggs on your horses. To get the eggs off you have to scrape the horse's hide with a pocketknife or special comb. If you were going to use them to transfer information from e-bay, you'd have to tie little tiny messages to their legs and hope they'd bring the messages back like homing pigeons.....
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kikat
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posted on April 19, 2001 06:29:29 AM new
Do the search engines have bots? I believe this is how I stumbled onto ebay three years ago. While watching an old Wonder Woman episode on cable I decided to look for all things Wonder Woman on the net. A dozen or so sites from my search (from a search engine) brought up ebay auctions for old Wonder Woman dolls, etc..
No idea if these sellers submitted their auctions to search engines though.
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RainyBear
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posted on April 19, 2001 09:59:17 AM new
How much do you know about Perl?
http://search.cpan.org/doc/RSE/lcwa-1.0.0/lib/lwp/lib/LWP.pm
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eventer
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posted on April 19, 2001 02:37:40 PM new
RainyBear,
I think it's the opposite of "knit". Knit, Perl, Knit, Perl.
Hmmm, Knit..maybe it's related to those bots.
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mikeselis
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posted on April 19, 2001 03:30:08 PM new
I love bots because they crawl all over the place and help you and others find things. I have a buch of bots crawl all over my sites and get my site listed.
Getting to business, you probably need some client based software that you can find all over ebay...
If you wanted to write your own bots, you might try Perl, Java, PHP, or create an standalone application with C++ or Visual Basic. It would take forever to build especially with ebay constantly changing things so I wouldn't suggest writing your own.
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Empires
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posted on April 19, 2001 09:35:37 PM new
taz8057 I think what you want is a robot to pull your work. You may check this out for more information. Very professional and clean. The package is worth the money in my opinion.
http://www.vrane.com
[ edited by Empires on Apr 19, 2001 09:36 PM ]
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timaratz
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posted on April 20, 2001 09:43:02 AM new
RainyBear,
Do you know of a source for Perl scripts that parse eBay data? I've done numerous searches and haven't found anything. I'll write my own if I have to, but usually someone has already done it and made it available on the web.
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sun818
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posted on April 20, 2001 10:40:15 AM new
Unless they are constantly updating it, it will be out of date. Many of the Auction Management software makers have to release new builds all the time to keep with eBay changes.
taz8057 - A lot of the auction management software like AuctionTrakker already provide this feature you are looking for. Even allows for "back selling" (contacting non-high bidders) in an automated way. I hate the feature as a buyer, but I guess there is a demand for it from a seller perspective.
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timaratz
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posted on April 20, 2001 11:37:25 AM new
Many of the Auction Management software makers have to release new builds all the time to keep with eBay changes.
It would be extemely easy for eBay to provide a good way for people to import auction data into their software. The method that is currently required is ridiculous. Even my bank and credit card company provide a way for me to import my statements.
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RainyBear
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posted on April 20, 2001 01:07:10 PM new
timaratz - I haven't found any perl scripts like that. If you're interested in rolling your own, you might check out http://developer.ebay.com/.
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timaratz
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posted on April 20, 2001 03:00:26 PM new
RainyBear: Thank you for the link. Ebay sure is an interesting compnay. I can apply for the developer's program. It takes 4 to 6 for my application to be considered. Then, if I'm accepted, they tell me what they will charge me (one-time enrollment fee, a monthly maintenance fee, and a usage fee based on the number of API transactions and the time of day). Sheesh!
It would take a good programmer at most a few days to add an option to the eBay Search page that would provide the results of the search in a text file that could be imported into any spreadsheet or database. This would make life a lot easier for a lot of sellers but I doubt that we'll ever see it.
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RainyBear
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posted on April 20, 2001 03:12:56 PM new
Oh geez, I hadn't poked around in there far enough to read about all those fees... I had no idea! I'm not terribly surprised, though.
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