Basic eBay Search Parsing
Conclusion
To use this script, simply call the PHP file and append "?searchstring=<text_you_want_to_search>"
onto the URL. So, for instance --
"www.yourdomain.com/ebayscrape.php?searchstring=batman" would bring
back results for "Batman". Again, this is a semi-basic way to parse
eBay's pages to serve only as an example of a way to accomplish similar
tasks. It will likely not work in the near future, as eBay is
constantly changing it's pages.. however the basic premises of parsing
should be applicable to other uses. Currently this script would only
grab the first page of auction results (ie.. the auctions ending
soonest) and you are limited to searching for single words. Further
coding would have to be done to grab additional pages of results or
entering multiple search terms. In addition, the results would also
need to be cleaned up further to use this for anything practical, as
they will contain dirty HTML code (extra tags).
The full source code to this script is below:
<?
/*******************************************************************
Filename: ebayparser.php
Description:
This script is to demonstrate a technique to parse eBay auctions.
Author: Wayne Eggert
Last Updated: December 2004
*******************************************************************/
$URL = "http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?query=".$searchstring."&sosortproperty=1&ht=1&from=R10&BasicSearch=";
$file = fopen("$URL", "r");
$r = "";
do{
$data = fread($file, 8192);
$r .= $data;
}
while(strlen($data) != 0);
$ebayTABLEArray = preg_split ("/<table.*?>/", $r);
// now try to find which <table> contains the search results are
for($x=0; $x<count($ebayTABLEArray); $x++){
if(strstr($ebayTABLEArray[$x],"Customize Display")){ // this is text
$resultTable = $x+1;
}
}
$ebayTRArray = preg_split("/<tr.*?>/",$ebayTABLEArray[$resultTable]);
echo "<BR><B>Ebay Results:</B><BR><BR>";
$start=2;
$end = $start + count($ebayTRArray);
for($i=$start;$i<$end;$i++){
$ebayTDArray = preg_split ("/<td.*?>/",$ebayTRArray[$i]);
//print_r($ebayTDArray);
preg_match("/<a.*?<\/a>/",$ebayTDArray[4],$match);
$item = strip_tags($match[0],"<A></A>");
if($item!=""){
$item_name = $item;
$price = strip_tags($ebayTDArray[6]);
// see if there's a Buy-It-Now price
$priceArray = explode("$",$price);
$item_price = $priceArray[1];
$item_bin = $priceArray[1];
$item_bids = strip_tags($ebayTDArray[7]);
$item_timeleft = strip_tags($ebayTDArray[8]);
echo $item_name." ".$item_price." ".$item_bids." ".$item_timeleft."<BR>";
}
}
?>
Comments:
| Re: Completed listings |
| Posted 03/23/08 11:23AM by AceBHound |
| I don't have specifics on how to pass the password credentials to a site, but I know it's possible because there are programs and applications out there that are capable of doing this. |
| Completed listings? |
| Posted 12/24/06 3:26AM by Anonymous Techdoser |
| Is it possible to search through completed listings? So, is it possible to log-in (without the visitor of my site knowing the log-in/password) and extract these auctions as well? |
| Thanks! |
| Posted 04/23/06 12:27AM by Anonymous Techdoser |
|
Thanks for writing this article. I appreciate all the work you've put into it and wanted to say IT WORKS! :O) Best article with a working example I have ever found online! |