Scrape Retailer Prices

Discussion in 'PHP' started by robokoder, Jun 16, 2008.

  1. #1
    Hey all,

    I need to keep a database of prices by a big online retailer across about 100 of their products.

    I figure, since they are indexed by loads of 'price comparison' sites it must be possilbe to scrape their pricing data. I'd like to do this using PHP.

    What I would love is a couple of pointers to open-source software which I could configure to do this. Obviously I can supply the product details to the software (via a MySQL database); I would just want it to take a look daily (preferably via PHP) and then add the data to the MySQL database.

    If anybody wants to take on the whole project (which shouldn't be that hard to be honest) I would happily reimburse you for your time, but note that I am a student and can't pay much!! To be honest, I'd prefer to do it myself anyway, but really need a nudge in the right direction.

    One quick question which would help (other than an existing software solution) would just be to explain how I can use PHP to navigate to a site, and find certain data (say between two common HTML code blocks), and treat it as a variable (so I can add it to a database). I figure if I can find common code around the price on every product page, then I could do this to extract the price itself (since I know the URLs I need to check)

    Any ideas? Much appreciated!!
     
    robokoder, Jun 16, 2008 IP
  2. EricBruggema

    EricBruggema Well-Known Member

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    #2
    Then you need a good PHP website crawler and that's not easy to create (and or cheap).
     
    EricBruggema, Jun 16, 2008 IP
  3. robokoder

    robokoder Peon

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    #3
    Surely 100 URLs a day shouldn't be too tough??

    Please elaborate
     
    robokoder, Jun 16, 2008 IP
  4. robokoder

    robokoder Peon

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    #4
    Don't worry, managed it.

    Thanks anyway
     
    robokoder, Jun 16, 2008 IP