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Dec 11 2017 03:39pm
long story short im confused about what i actually need to perform certain functions.
objective: pull information from various websites and upload them to an excel sheet. then update old info with new info onto said excel sheet.


1. to start i THINK i need a web scrapper to pull fields of data from certain websites and parse into an excel file
2. another program to update said info and overwrite certain fields / values if they are newer or something of the like


i will not use an api because all of them require money out the nose that i don't have. i would prefer a program that can be run from my website like a schedule rather than using free programs to pull the info and then manually upload but hey if that's how it needs to be then i'll do that too.

please pm me so i can describe this in more rambling if you can help. i will pay for the programs if i'm unable to code this (which it's looking like i can't)
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Dec 11 2017 10:37pm
We would need to know what 'various websites' means. If they have APIs you can generally use those for free or if you sign up and accept their ToS (social media works that way for the most part). Otherwise you're going to have to write a hacky implementation that relies on acting like a human user.
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Dec 12 2017 04:35pm
i looked into an api but it's not free, you end up paying per click/usage. it does do some if not most of what i would like but i still would prefer to code it.

it doesnt have to export into an excel sheet, database would be fine. i'd be hoping for dynamic content/real time updates from ecommerce sites and the like if that helps any
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Dec 12 2017 05:39pm
if there is anyone who can help please let me know. i think a restful program could do this as well.
yes im still lost lol
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Dec 13 2017 02:18pm
Quote (Kikuya @ Dec 12 2017 06:39pm)
if there is anyone who can help please let me know. i think a restful program could do this as well.
yes im still lost lol


We need to know the website and what you're trying to accomplish. I can help, but without that information I'm not going to say I will help.
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Dec 14 2017 05:45am
Ok, so correct me if i'm wrong. here is what you try to achieve:

1. scrap several e-commerce website every X minutes / hours
2. store the data you scrapped in a database.
3. update an excel file with the new data you stored in step 2.

is that correct ?
if so i also want to know what systeme you're using for development, is it Unix based ?
also what are your knowledge about programming ? what language do you know ?

i could help but i need few details to make it work.
From what i know i can only give you few advices like

1. first of all think about the structure of your database, what tables you gonna create ? what field ?
this will be according the data you're scrapping, e.g if you're scrapping products you might want to make a table called "product" with field like "name","price","picture_url", ...

2. use Linux Cron feature to periodically run your server side script that will do the scrapping(can be php / ruby / javascript)

3. use a Scrapping library, that will save you lots of time.
type this in google "FriendsOfPHP/Goutte"

4. use an ORM to insert your scraped data in DB with more ease. Copy pasted this usage example from Doctrine2 documentation:

Code
<?php
// create_product.php <name>
require_once "bootstrap.php";

$newProductName = $argv[1];

$product = new Product();
$product->setName($newProductName);

$entityManager->persist($product);
$entityManager->flush();

echo "Created Product with ID " . $product->getId() . "\n";



5. same goes for filling the Excel sheet, use a PHP library (check PHPExcel on github)


if you feel like you don't wanna deal with it i can write it all for ya, feel free to pm me.
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