Auction Bot

[AuctionBot]

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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[AuctionBot]

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

[AuctionBot]

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.

[Logik]

Unofficial BitcoinTalk API.

It's in Java so you might not like that, but anyway you're welcome to access the front-end so you don't have to code the scraper and API yourself.

I'm still developing it so you might like to make your own so I'm not holding you up anyway. I had the same idea (auction bot) to exercise the API once all the features were in it. Reading posts is fairly feature-complete, sending/receiving PMs is there but not really documented properly yet.

Anyway to answer once of your earlier questions there is a rate limit. I'm not sure if theymos wants the logic posted or not, I asked him in a PM once and he was very helpful so you might try that.

[AuctionBot]

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.

[Hiroaki]

Which bot are we currently using @ ASICMINER auction ?

Great job btw. !

[John (John K.)]

Which bot are we currently using @ ASICMINER auction ?

Great job btw. !

It's msm995's bot. 

[Logik]

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.

Haha, no, go for it. It just struck me as an interesting idea but I have so many of those that the chances of me actually building it are close to zero.

Re: The existing bot - I didn't actually know one existed! Interesting.. here is the profile https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=107674;sa=showPosts

Where can we get more info on this bot or its creator? I can't find msm995 by search

[John (John K.)]

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.

Haha, no, go for it. It just struck me as an interesting idea but I have so many of those that the chances of me actually building it are close to zero.

Re: The existing bot - I didn't actually know one existed! Interesting.. here is the profile https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=107674;sa=showPosts

Where can we get more info on this bot or its creator? I can't find msm995 by search

PM that bot directly - I might've messed the name up for the moment.

[AuctionBot]

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.