biggiesmalls

I'm working on a website that compares prices from different sites. I've completed most the design and layout the only hurdle that i can't seem to overcome is the 'program' that browsers and compares items on those sites. Would i need an Agent or Bot to achieve this? Or rather a database that holds the information? please i need answers

dr.p

Type in "price comparison script" in google. Or "open source price comparison script," maybe.

http://www.kaonsoftwares.com/price-c...on-script.html

The list of features on that page should give you a general idea of what kind of features you can make/find.

It would be best to have one or more "bots" that automatically get information from various sites to build up a database. I would finds sites that offer a data feed for product information, and then write/find scripts that parse this information and store it in a database table.

As an example: Amazon.com has web services for product advertising when you sign up to be an "Amazon Associate."

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xavier

What exactly do you understand by "agent or bot" ?
I'm thinking of a scheduled job on windows or cron job on linux that will run every so often and hit the respective sites - after that inserting the results in the DB.

Then your main app makes a query to the database and displays the price comparison.

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DaWei

Perhaps you are having problems scraping the salient information from a site? I don't think you're going to win this years "Description of the Problem" award.

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biggiesmalls

lol DaWei @ "Description of the Problem" award! let me quickly recap how much i understood i need something similar to the cron job in linux that scans sites every so often to update its prices that in return puts the found data on a database ready to splash the information out. so far so good?

xavier

ok, and the question is ?

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