www.auctionsieve.com

redmask · AuctionSieve regular Joined: 05 Jun 2009 Posts: 13

Hi Nev,

I am having serious problems with A.S. lately.
The issue seems to be when you select Retrieval Options > Time Frame > New Today. When this option is selected the Auctions Sieve stops from responding and is returning only a couple of results from hundreds.
Tried this on 2 machines and it does the same.
When I select Time Frame>All it does work but it takes about 20 hours to get the results because they are just too many.

So the main idea is something is wrong with this Time Frame.

If you can please fix it up.

Thank you.

nev · Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2009 1:36 pm Post subject:

Does the latest beta fix these problems?

redmask · AuctionSieve regular Joined: 05 Jun 2009 Posts: 13

no it doesn`t it only retrieves partial results from a list of 8 categories.
for example, there are categories with 100, 230, 500 pages and it only takes 2-3 pages from each Sad

the problem is only when I use the NEW TODAY time frame options but it retrieves all the results if I am using the ALL time frame option. I can work like that but it takes 6 hours to retrieve all the auctions while it took 30 minutes to get the new auctions.
The new version does not fix this also...

Please help if you can...

Thanks Nev

nev · Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 12:04 pm Post subject:

What are some example categories?

redmask · AuctionSieve regular Joined: 05 Jun 2009 Posts: 13

the categories are : 36316, 97658, 25410, 50965

I tried them alone and I tried them into a single sieve.
Same problem, it only retrieves partial results when the New Today filter is activated. It retrieves like a max of 30-40 pages from an average of 200-600 pages.

Thanks Nev

nev · Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 5:45 am Post subject:

Ok, just looking at these categories.

- 36316 is Business & Industrial > Electrical & Test Equipment > Test Equipment > Attenuators http://business.shop.ebay.com/Attenuators-/36316/i.html?_catref=1&_fln=1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m282
- It currently has 456 results total (10 pages). New today there are 22 items (1 page).
- 97658 is Network Analyzers and has 371 items, 19 new today.
- 50965 is Gas Testers, 431 items, 32 new today.

So those 3 categories don't have many items. Perhaps those category numbers represented broader categories in the past and now they represent smaller sub-sections? eBay occasionally reassigns and splits up categories.

- 25410 Meters is the biggest category and it contains 5877 items (118 pages), 577 new today (12 pages).

So a sieve which retrieves the New Today items for those 4 categories will retrieve about 15 pages in total.

Perhaps it's the feedback in AuctionSieve that's confusing? For example, when retrieving the New Today items for the Meters category, AuctionSieve will display "downloaded 50 of 5900 (potentially)".

The 5900 is just the total number of items in that category. It says "potentially" because *all* of the items in the category could be New Today - it doesn't know beforehand. So it starts retrieving all the pages in order from the most recently listed. Once it gets to a point where the next item no longer has the "New Today" icon, it stops. For the Meters category, it's after 577 items.

Does that make sense?

redmask · AuctionSieve regular Joined: 05 Jun 2009 Posts: 13

Dear Nev, you are totally right but that is not the problem, i do know that newer means less results but I observed the way the AS works now with these categories and I can tell for sure that there is a problem somewhere.

For example, when retrieving the New Today items for the Meters category, AuctionSieve will display "downloaded 50 of 5900 (potentially)".

Okat that is correct and the AuctionSieve should continue until it reaches 5900 items and the display the results. But the real problem is that AuctionSieve only downloads a few results not the total of 5900. I looked at it and it starts then it downloads lets say 80 or 90 or 20 or 150 but it never gets to to the 577 limit out of 5900 items then it just stops. I mean I know that from "meters" it should only retrieve 577 items out of 5900 because only 577 are new today but somewhere it crashes and only retrieves partial. It is not a fixed amount every time but it only gets partial results and when I say partial is like 10% from the total max.

Please do a test with AS and confirm if this happens to you too. I tried on different computers with different versions and still the same problem and it appeared like 2 months ago.

nev · Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2009 1:19 pm Post subject:

Hmmmmm
Well I just tried running it again and it successfully downloaded 11 pages - 527 items.

Here's what we can do.
Run the sieve with just that category.
Get the problem to happen - ie quits downloading before getting the full expected number of pages (roughly 11 or 12).
Open up the folder where you installed AuctionSieve.
Find the most recently modified lastpageX.html file.
Send it to me.