UPDATE: Source Code and Application to Monitor Marketplace Threads

[msternin]

Was thinking about writing some custom software to monitor the marketplace and alert me when a thread, given a specific criteria, comes up.

Ie: monitor "private Firearms Sales - Handguns" and look for G42's.
Something like that - I'm sure you get the idea.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I figured I'd ask here first. I've done projects like this before and if no specific APIs were available, I'd just retool some old code.

Application is basically done. See additional posts below to link to both source code (Visual Studio 2012) and a complied "release" build for those CGNers who just want to run the application.

Have fun!!

[Exile Machine]

Have you looked into using google alerts?
-Mark

[msternin]

Have you looked into using google alerts?
-Mark

Too juvenile for me. I want to build something rather specific to task.

[msternin]

Furthermore, I want to build deeper analysis as so I would inspect the content of the thread and look for additional key parameters.

[ocabj]

http://www.vbulletin.com/vbcms/content.php/333-technical-documentation

I haven't used (admin'ed) vBulletin in years so I can't comment on the API that exists now. But it appears to be a REST API. Data received in json.

[msternin]

Cool. I'll check out the docs.

[msternin]

UPDATE: Version 1 - Pretty Much Done

Spent a little over an hour to come up with a good working 1st version. (See attached Screen Shot)

Based on a set of keywords, the app will (acting like a web user) grabs all interesting links from a given marketplace page(s). It lists them onscreen and allows me to double-click to open in a browser. The process repeats based on a specified interval.

The links are tracked by their thread Id so I don't get dups in the list.

It essentially removes a ton of work for me looking for specific items that I'm interested in.

[lasbrg]

Spent a little over an hour to come up with a good working 1st version. (See attached Screen Shot)

Based on a set of keywords, the app will (acting like a web user) grabs all interesting links from a given marketplace page(s). It lists them onscreen and allows me to double-click to open in a browser. The process repeats based on a specified interval.

The links are tracked by their thread Id so I don't get dups in the list.

It essentially removes a ton of work for me looking for specific items that I'm interested in.

Looks interesting, would you be willing to share the code?

[Jeepers]

Looks interesting, would you be willing to share the code?

maybe even donate it to the site and all could use it seeing that VB's search engine blows most of the time

[msternin]

I have no issues sharing what I've built with the community. That said, I need to work out a few rough edges with what I've done so far in so much as to make it a little less "me" specific for others.

For example, right now the "keywords" are hard coded with no means to add/change/delete from the UI. Naturally they are hard coded for my current desires of finding 1st, 2nd and 3rd gen S&W semi-autos.

The tool/applet (whatever you want to call it) would not take the place of any existing search tool as it only performs a very surface-layer analysis without actually doing any deeper dives into an actual thread itself. Right now, I have no need for that.

Give me a little more time (maybe by the end of the week) to de-personalize it and I can then create a repo on Bitbucket. I just don't want to get bombarded with feature requests or even bug fixes. (Yes I admit, I may have written a line or two of code in my day that had a bug in it. - I actually prefer to say "undocumented feature")

If you all are good with that than I'll de-personalize and move forward from there.

[lasbrg]

Outstanding msternin, thank you very much!

[xOperator]

Wouldnt it be easier just to add RSS Feeds?

[msternin]

Wouldnt it be easier just to add RSS Feeds?

no. rss does not do what I want.

[msternin]

UPDATE: A few feature and UI changes

Made a few changes to some features and the UI.

From the newly attached screen shot, you can see that keywords can now be modified as opposed to previously being hard coded to serve only my needs.

If fact, when you exit the app, it will save off your listed keywords and reload them the next time you fire up the app.

You'll also notice a check-box to run as an anonymous user or you can grab your "bbuserid" & "bbpassword" values from you web browser's cookie files.

The logic of the app works the same, but vBulletin returns different style URLs for anonymous users which includes some kind of session variable not present when run with your bbuserid & bbpassword. (If you don't know how to find your web browser cookies, leave Anonymous checked as this is the default) - It's a geeky thing.

Lastly, you can see from the screenshot, I added a status strip at the bottom to display some info.

To view the "interesting" post, you can either double-click it in the list or use the arrow keys and hit "enter"

Tomorrow I'll add some threading code since right now everything is done within the context of the main UI thread, so when the Web call is done to fetch the links, the UI can hang for a second or two. The threading code will allow UI updates to be made in a thread-safe way and not hang the UI.

So far on track to post the code by the end of the week, maybe even earlier.

[rdfact]

What language is your app written in?