www.auctionsieve.com

jjforb · Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 9:17 pm Post subject: Auctionsieve 1.9.1

I was getting error messages during searches like "ebay is returning error pages I can't interpret for your search . ." so I upgraded to Auctionsieve 1.9.1 and am still getting the same messages. Also when a search is complete I can see the picture, but the title area is blank for some items. Any fixes coming? Thank you.

wpitman · AuctionSieve expert Joined: 27 Mar 2005 Posts: 53

I'm having the same problem -- lot's of error messages.

nev · Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 12:53 pm Post subject:

Are you using search based sieves or category based sieves?
Also can you give me details of the searches and/or categories?

Nev

selfdestroyer · Posted once Joined: 13 Jul 2008 Posts: 1

nev · Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 1:36 pm Post subject:

Ok, ebay is randomly returning results in either the old search result format or its 'new search experience' mode.

AuctionSieve can't interpret the new pages yet but will keep retrying. Sometimes it gets lucky and ebay returns the old style. Other times it returns the new style a few times and AuctionSieve gives up.

I'll make some changes to interpret the new style. (And I need to make some extra changes to make sure the search options get passed through properly - currently they aren't.)

May take a day or two.

nev · Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 3:50 pm Post subject:

Ok, new beta is out.

wickmesh · Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 12:31 pm Post subject:

Hi Nev,

The Beta seems to solve the error messages and blank auction titles problems - Thanks.

But it seems there is another problem now - items from sellers that I've chosen to exclude are being included in my sieves... Sad

I'm searching ebay.co.uk.

Kind Regards
Andrew

jjforb · Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 7:33 pm Post subject: Auctionsieve 1.9.1.1

The beta release seems to have fixed all the problems I was experiencing. Thank you for your effort. Very Happy

nev · Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 11:42 am Post subject:

Andrew,

Some of the options appear to be going missing.
Sometimes, ebay returns the old result pages, sometimes it redirects AuctionSieve to another url which gets the new result pages. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to pass across all the options.

So I'm going to have to detect that and somehow re-add the options...

I'll hopefully put out a new beta this week.

nev · Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 3:46 pm Post subject:

Ok, 1.9.1.3 is out.

I've squashed a lot of bugs, a lot of which seemed to affect ebay uk.

Most of the problems stem from ebay returning random page formats - sometimes old style results, sometimes new style. But not only that, sometimes randomly 50, 25 or 100 results on the one page, and even worse, gallery pages. It was the gallery pages which would cause things like blank titles. (Well I hope that was the cause.) I've found ways to force ebay to always return 50 results per page in list format.

One thing to be aware of: for category sieves, I saw ebay returning variable results depending on old or new style pages! Eg on one page I saw it had several auctions which had around 5 hours to go. Viewing the same category page in the other style, those auctions were missing! Not much I can do about that unfortunately.

Let me know of any other issues you have. I'm sure I haven't found everything.

wickmesh · Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 2:59 pm Post subject:

Hi Nev,

Version 1.9.2 is much better - thanks for your efforts on this - but I'm afraid I agree with you, I think there are still things you haven't found!

I'm still sure that I am getting items from sellers I have excluded from my searches. Also I've just found quite a few items in my watchlist with blank Auction titles and the seller name in the price field. Sometimes I've noticed the price field is blank in the watchlist. Also I've seen occasionally (again on the watchlist), if there is a buy-it-now price (in brackets) the price auctionsieve displays is the auction start price, not the buy-it-now price on the listing (but it is always an auction with-buy-it-now listing in this case).

I also think I am seeing items re-appearing that I have seen before (I have "Ignore auctions already seen" ticked in all my sieves). I guess it might be that Auctionsieve is not picking up the item number correctly to add to the seen.sieve file - most of the numbers in this file are 12 digits long, but some of the numbers are 14 characters long - they start with a # (hash symbol) and then have 13 digits.

As always I'm searching the dreaded ebay.co.uk (why can't they just leave the search alone?!?)

Best Regards
Andrew

wickmesh · Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 8:03 am Post subject:

Hi Nev,

OK, this morning I've found 8 auctions in my price history - but none of them have actually ended on ebay, and none of them are automatically recurring (relisting) shops items. One has a missing title and the seller name in the price field, the rest look normal.

I also find that ebay is sometimes bringing up a message "This listing (120293458213) has been removed or is no longer available. Please make sure you entered the right item number." and sometimes the listing appears fine (yes the item number is the same) - so actually the listing has not been removed! I also find every so often that for some items I just randomly get the ebay.co.uk homepage - but click view again in AS and the listing comes up correctly. I think therefore these two are ebay bugs, not problems with AS.

Looking at the search results format, it looks new yet again - I guess this might be causing the problems...

Kind Regards
Andrew

nev · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 3:55 pm Post subject:

You can ignore those lines that start with #'s in the seen.sieve file - they're timestamps.

Ok, fixes! New beta is out.
- Excluded sellers should now take effect
- I'm forcing ebay to return old item pages for watchlist details

Also noticed that sometimes ebay would return extra 'similar items' on some pages if you only got say 3 items - I know ebay is trying to be helpful, but it's not helpful to power users such as those that use AuctionSieve! Smile

wickmesh · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 7:21 pm Post subject:

Hi Nev,

Many thanks for your continued efforts! I've downloaded and am now running 1.9.2.2.

The searches seem much better, my sieves download much faster and I don't seem to have the rubbish results from excluded sellers now - Thanks! (I never done any multi-category searches in my sieves.)

Unfortunately, the problems with the watchlist are still present. Sad

To test the problem I hit "Refresh all" in my watchlist - and I can scroll down the watchlist watching the Last Refreshed field, as AS refreshes each listing. I can watch it happening; some listings loose their titles, and gain the seller name in the price field. Leaving it 10 minutes and trying again, some change back from this 'wrong' state to as they should be, some 'correct' ones switch to being 'wrong', some 'wrong' ones do not change (only the time left/last refreshed fields update). I can see no pattern; BIN and normal auctions are affected, the auction currency makes no difference, nor does what country the seller comes from. Out of the 302 items I am watching, around 11 appear to be 'wrong' at any one time, so that's around 3.5 percent.

I've found another issue too. In the price field on more than one item, there are unexplained brackets and numbers: item 380055377024 has "GBP 4.99 ((.{3,40}))" in the price field. Item 280257192898 has "US $0.99 ((.{3,40}))". Item 250283214887 again "US $0.99 ((.{3,40}))". Item 280256261031 - "micro_toys_world ((.{3,40}))", exactly the same for item 280256253547. And 150283846875 says "coolkato2 ((.{3,40}))". It doesn't matter if it is a 'wrong' or 'correct' displayed listing - 3 are prices and 3 seller names - but it seems to be always the same extra code.

Also, I had viewed the first listing I mention in the previous paragraph, then while investigating the next one I clicked View in the watchlist - and it brought up the first listing again! Might this be the issue Vista users are finding? Except I'm running XP... Clicking View a second time on the second item mentioned above in my watchlist, brought up the correct (second) listing in my browser. Clicking View on the other ones I subsequently looked at brought up the listings I was expecting.

After another 30 minutes or so I did "Refresh All" again, and the same symptoms, some listings change (correct to wrong or wrong to correct), some stay the same (both correct and wrong). Some gain the extra strange bracketed code, some loose it, some that had it already do not change.

As always, my default site is ebay.co.uk. I hope this info is of use. These problems are only niggles, they do not stop me using the program!

Thanks and Kind Regards
Andrew

nev · Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:07 am Post subject:

Ok, obviously the hack to force eBay to return old style item pages doesn't work reliably. I'll put in some code to force a retry which should do for now.

I really want to be concentrating on version 2 and the proper eBay api rather than patching up this old system... Smile