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Is a site like pcpartpicker.com technically hard to develop?

Discussion in 'Programming' started by altar, Dec 22, 2014.

  1. #1
    Hi all,

    I was wondering if a site like pcpartspicker.com was technically hard to develop?
    I mean the part of having all the products linked to retailers' databases so that the site can always show the lowest available prices.
    Is that very difficult to do for a good php developer?

    Thanks for your advice
    S
     
    altar, Dec 22, 2014 IP
  2. Dagon

    Dagon Active Member

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    #2
    Not very difficult, but takes some time to set up scraping for each database.
     
    Dagon, Dec 22, 2014 IP
  3. Anveto

    Anveto Well-Known Member

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    #3
    In Sweden we have a similar site where you can find the best deals of pretty much all the stores. Each store keeps a textfile on their server which usually has a format like "itemname;sku;price;shipping;etc;" which the site then parses and stores in their database. So basically that site can just get the contents of storename.com/pricelist.txt to get the latest prices. I configured the store I worked for to regenerate this text file whenever a product was added/updated/deleted.

    I am sure you could make parsers specific for some large stores in order to get your initial content. I would not consider it a very hard task but it does take some time to get right. I would prefer to use DomXpath http://php.net/manual/en/class.domxpath.php
     
    Anveto, Dec 22, 2014 IP
  4. altar

    altar Active Member

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    #4
    Thanks
    So it's mostly a question of having access to a file (an scv file or whatever) with the updated info. Each store doesn't need to have an API?
     
    altar, Dec 22, 2014 IP
  5. Anveto

    Anveto Well-Known Member

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    #5
    I mean the file works sort of like a very basic api with just one request and one response. So you could ask stores to create that for you or provide access to their APIs. An API will most likely be easier than parsing the DOM and will create less of a load on their end.
     
    Anveto, Dec 22, 2014 IP
  6. altar

    altar Active Member

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    #6
    I see, thanks a lot for the explanation
    (I may send you a pm soon for some inquiries)
     
    altar, Dec 23, 2014 IP
  7. Pigeon Yoga

    Pigeon Yoga Active Member

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    #7
    I think the database would be the hardest part. Do you already have a source for the data?
     
    Pigeon Yoga, Jan 4, 2015 IP