Looking at this thread: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=25009.0

It seems you can only get a number of recent posts from particular sub-forums or categories. Shame.

Thanks for clearing that up Theymos.

Also, I had no idea about the XML endpoints. It doesn't seem to work on a thread-by-thread basis. It would make scraping a hell of a lot easier.

I guess I'll continue working on my project until the other bot (Auctioneer) is shown to be in working order.

I don't want to push the software out too quickly because buggy auction moderating creates quite a mess.

I'm currently working on an Auction Bot at the moment.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=188719.0

Any idea of how you're going to handle the CAPTCHA for sending PMs?

Thanks for the reply Logik. I was reading over that thread yesterday, actually. I was planning on using the jsoup library for scraping by leveraging IKVM, which is a .NET implementation of the Java VM. I'll take a look at your source a little more this weekend. If desired, I might just want to help you build on your library since you already have a head start . I used to do a lot of work in Java (and it's real similar to C#), so that would not be an issue.

If you had plans to make an auction bot, I don't want to encroach on your idea or work. Let me know what you were thinking.

Anyone know if there's a request limit on the forums? I assume I'll need to implement a timer for the screen scraper so as to not get my IP auto-banned.

The over-simplified functionality will be as follows:

• Auction/thread owner will send a PM to this account to register the auction as being moderated by the bot
• The bot will parse the original post looking for formatted flags that defines characteristics of the auction
• The auction thread will be watched for valid bids
• A summary post will made after each valid bid (or x amount of bids) until the auction time runs out
• The auction owner will be able to make administrative commands, such as ending the auction early or canceling it completely

I'm a longtime lurker, but I finally got around to creating an account. There seems to be a real need for a bot to control and keep track of bidding statuses in the Auction forum. I am a software developer by day and have a degree in Computer Science, so I thought I'd give this a shot.

Development will be done primarily in C#, as that is what I'm most proficient in. There will be a relatively simple SQL backend to track active auctions and bids. I'll probably start this project by creating a screen scraping library to login, post replies, and check/send PMs; unless there's an API for this forum that I am unaware of.

I'll be using this thread for testing purposes during development. I have a pretty good idea about how everything is going to work, but feel free to post suggestions regarding implementation and user-interaction. I would have posted in the "Meta" subforum, but my newbie state restricts that.

And of course, if you feel so inclined to send a tip to encourage development, I would not object 
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