| Discussion Forum: Thread 118484 |
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| | | Author: | Personnexyz  | | Posted: | Aug 22, 2011 23:21 | | Subject: | BrickLink API | | Viewed: | 410 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | | Status: | Discarded | |
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| I've been trying to find the best price to buy my Wanted list (that I've uploaded).
It is around 600 Lots for a total of 1200 parts.
And it seems to be difficult to do something like:
1) Look for the sellers with a maximum of part I want to buy (this is already
possible)
2) Select X sellers (maximum of 10)
3) Return the parts I want, they all have in common
4) Return the price of the order for each of the seller
I'm not sure the bricklink developer has time to do this, but that would be pretty
easy to program if an API is available
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| | | | | Author: | FigBits | | Posted: | Aug 22, 2011 23:56 | | Subject: | Re: BrickLink API | | Viewed: | 147 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, Personnexyz writes:
| | I've been trying to find the best price to buy my Wanted list (that I've uploaded).
It is around 600 Lots for a total of 1200 parts.
And it seems to be difficult to do something like:
1) Look for the sellers with a maximum of part I want to buy (this is already
possible)
2) Select X sellers (maximum of 10)
3) Return the parts I want, they all have in common
4) Return the price of the order for each of the seller
I'm not sure the bricklink developer has time to do this, but that would be pretty
easy to program if an API is available
|
Would it really be all that simple? This is a version of the travelling salesman
problem, right? 600 cities, and ten roads leading from each city.
--
Marc.
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| | | | | | | Author: | JasonsBricks | | Posted: | Aug 23, 2011 00:22 | | Subject: | Re: BrickLink API | | Viewed: | 119 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, FigBits writes:
| | In Suggestions, Personnexyz writes:
| | I've been trying to find the best price to buy my Wanted list (that I've uploaded).
It is around 600 Lots for a total of 1200 parts.
And it seems to be difficult to do something like:
1) Look for the sellers with a maximum of part I want to buy (this is already
possible)
2) Select X sellers (maximum of 10)
3) Return the parts I want, they all have in common
4) Return the price of the order for each of the seller
I'm not sure the bricklink developer has time to do this, but that would be pretty
easy to program if an API is available
|
Would it really be all that simple? This is a version of the travelling salesman
problem, right? 600 cities, and ten roads leading from each city.
--
Marc.
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What he is asking for is not that difficult, the roadblock here is the fact that
BrickLink ceases to move forward. The database is not infinite, there are known
values here, so it can be queried and results returned as he suggested.
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| | | | | | | Author: | FigBits | | Posted: | Aug 23, 2011 00:22 | | Subject: | Re: BrickLink API | | Viewed: | 123 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, FigBits writes:
| | In Suggestions, Personnexyz writes:
| | I've been trying to find the best price to buy my Wanted list (that I've uploaded).
It is around 600 Lots for a total of 1200 parts.
And it seems to be difficult to do something like:
1) Look for the sellers with a maximum of part I want to buy (this is already
possible)
2) Select X sellers (maximum of 10)
3) Return the parts I want, they all have in common
4) Return the price of the order for each of the seller
I'm not sure the bricklink developer has time to do this, but that would be pretty
easy to program if an API is available
|
Would it really be all that simple? This is a version of the travelling salesman
problem, right? 600 cities, and ten roads leading from each city.
|
Actually, as I think about it again, it's not actually as difficult as I implied,
if you are simplifying the problem the way you describe.
However, you are assuming that picking just the top 10 stores (those with the
maximum number of parts on your list) would be sufficient. I don't think it would
be. With 600 different items on your list, I don't think the top 10 stores would
have everything.
In addition by limiting yourself to those top 10 stores, you're potentially missing
some great deals. If all ten stores have an average of 100 of your wanted lots,
but they are listed at higher-than-average prices, you would not have your attention
drawn to any stores that only have 40 of the lots, at significant savings.
Even then, even if it was possible to get all the data, you would need to factor
in shipping, which is not automated, nor do I expect it to be any time soon.
(That's where the problem really starts to approach the travelling salesman problem.)
--
Marc.
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| | | | | | | | | Author: | Personnexyz | | Posted: | Aug 23, 2011 01:28 | | Subject: | Re: BrickLink API | | Viewed: | 108 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| Indeed, it doesn't take the shipping cost. Which will vary anyway.
But it will give us a rough idea of where the best deal is.
You are correct than the first 10 might not be enough, but we my wanted part
list, I see the number of lots dropping quickly after 10 sellers.
This will be a quick solution to find the most parts for the cheapest price (not
including S&H). It will be in every case easier than a manual process. The process
could anyway also be repeated with the rare parts
I already have thought about the program which is pretty simple. My problem is
now to get the data from Bricklink.
Do you know an easy way to access the bricklink sellers database ? I've not seen
any database export possible.
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| | | | | | | | | | | Author: | FigBits | | Posted: | Aug 23, 2011 06:53 | | Subject: | Re: BrickLink API | | Viewed: | 136 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, Personnexyz writes:
| | Indeed, it doesn't take the shipping cost. Which will vary anyway.
But it will give us a rough idea of where the best deal is.
You are correct than the first 10 might not be enough, but we my wanted part
list, I see the number of lots dropping quickly after 10 sellers.
This will be a quick solution to find the most parts for the cheapest price (not
including S&H). It will be in every case easier than a manual process. The process
could anyway also be repeated with the rare parts
I already have thought about the program which is pretty simple. My problem is
now to get the data from Bricklink.
Do you know an easy way to access the bricklink sellers database ? I've not seen
any database export possible.
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Use BrickLink to find those top ten stores. Use BrickLink to put everything on
your wanted list into a shopping cart for all ten. Copy the HTML from the shopping
cart page. Use a script that you build to extract the price data for each item
from this HTML, and put it in a format you can use. Run your algorithm on that
data.
--
Marc.
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| | | | | | | | | Author: | StarBrick | | Posted: | Aug 23, 2011 02:25 | | Subject: | Re: BrickLink API | | Viewed: | 123 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| What's wrong with the fun you can have when going through the top 10 sellers
manually in 10 different opened windows on your pc after the first search has
been done?
I can determine rather quickly what seller(s) are the best options for me (based
on fees, shipping costs, location, other stuff not on my wanted list but always
nice to acquire). Adding this feature into the storesoftware would spoil this....
It's not always necessary to automate manual processes. Keeps the mind working
too!
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