Important Betfair Market Loading Information

Investor,

This would probably be possible using Java Script/JSON and or AHK ( AutoHotKey )

Actually the more I think about it AHK would be the way to go.

I've only heard of AHK, and not actually used it myself but your question kindled my inquisitive nature and I've just spent 45 minutes researching it ( that'll be £50 please [;)] )
It appears that AHK supports regular expression searching of web pages in some form and hence anything that you do systematically but manually ( i.e. go to one page look at the URL and open it ) can be done automatically.

Does Betfair Lite still exist ?  I looked into parsing that a couple of years ago and it was fairly easily achievable ( in that its all text and links with no or little graphic content )


I don't know your IT skill level but if you've got some then AHK would probably get you to what you wanted.

the url that is created is.
http://sports.betfair.com/Index.do?mi=101815733&ex=1&origin=MRL

Do you think I should just go the API route, or is it worthwhile pursuing this method?

I think any method you choose will have its pros and cons.

The API, for instance, Doesn't have a "Going in play" function so you'd have do to some coding external to the API anyway. But on the plus side, you get to work with a procedural Computer language so adding things like automatic betting would be alot easier.


But based on sticking pretty much to your original specifications I would guess that the whole thing could be written in 100-300 lines of AHK code( depending on data source of the inplay markets, larry has mentioned a few good ones ).

Ultimately, there are many ways to do this but for a stand alone program that enables you to just press a key and open up a few markets AHK seems the top choice to me.


If you could think of a way to make this mutually beneficial then.....

Escapee, it's probably no more than a day's work for an experienced betfair api coder to knock up a tool to generate market view URLs from a list of market names (you grab all the markets from the api for the given days then search for the titles and grab their IDs, then generate the URL). In fact, a day is generous for someone who has used the BF API before. I could probably do it in an hour or two, but Im not for hire, sadly :)

Surprisingly, I got some very helpful tips here, yet nothing on the developers forum

@Chilly the Dog
Ignore my last post, sorry I seem to have gotten out of the grumpy side of the bed this morning.

Escapee, I have a list of in play matches, taken from the thread given above.
I want a subset of those matches loaded, because when there for instance 18 games on at the same time, I can't load them all as it will crash my browser.

My idea was that for security reasons, I will log into betfair manually before running the program. It will open six browser windows and position them across my six screens (I have done this bit with autokey).

For each match I have selected or loaded in a configuration file or whatever, it will load CS, Total Goals, HT Score, Over 4.5 goals, 5.5 and 6.5 in suck a way that each browser windows contains all the same market types(for different games) and each tab number contains a market for the same game (tab 4 on each browser window contains a market for the same game).

I hope this is clear?

Ideally there will be some flexibility (ability to alter standard markets, and to open 4 or 5 browser instances instead of 6 (due to memory / processor constraints and data request charges) when viewing 15+games simultaneously.

Not sure if I made it clear but if you clicked on 10 different matches then 10 different browsers would open up each with 6 ( or how ever many ) sub markets for that match.

If you can generate a good income doing what you do with all these markets open at the same time and so on, then it could be worth investing in better tools rather than cobbling stuff together.

A bespoke API application would surely be far more efficient and effective - e.g. it could simultaneously refresh prices across your 6 market group the moment you switch to a different event (perhaps highlighting any prices that have changed since you last looked) - much better than a bunch of tabs refreshing randomly every 20 seconds or so. Plus no data request charges if you don't bet. Without the website bloat you would have more room on-screen for more related markets or even charts.

Might be worth getting a quote or two.

Fred! Joined: 21 Aug 08
Replies: 87 14 Oct 10 01:10   
If you can generate a good income doing what you do with all these markets open at the same time and so on, then it could be worth investing in better tools rather than cobbling stuff together.

A bespoke API application would surely be far more efficient and effective - e.g. it could simultaneously refresh prices across your 6 market group the moment you switch to a different event (perhaps highlighting any prices that have changed since you last looked) - much better than a bunch of tabs refreshing randomly every 20 seconds or so. Plus no data request charges if you don't bet. Without the website bloat you would have more room on-screen for more related markets or even charts.

Might be worth getting a quote or two.

 
^^

One feature of geeks toy that I really like is how the box will flash when a bet is matched in it. It makes it very easy to visualise what is happening if you have several markets open at once and tells you what has happened without you having to interpret any numerical information. Far superior to the standard interface (which, as Escapee also noted, needs to be refreshed manually if you want any semblence of live information).

I think I'll stick with my abacus.
Sorry Investor just being my usual facetious self.
I do know when I'm totally out of my depth, and the content of this thread is absloutely unfathomable to me.
Sure hope it's worth all the time and effort.
Dinosaurs rule OK !

The API is very reliable. I think blips on the API get mentioned more because trading software tends to highlight issues whereas the website could go down for many seconds at a time or be intermittent and you could easily be none the wiser that it ever happened.

It would be more involved yes, you'd have more things to decide on and specify, but you would hopefully then have your ideal interface. A regular API developer would likely have a basic framework that already meets your requirements (ie do the same as the web interface), a specialised market selection tool and running 6 windows shouldn't be too much effort. If you stuck with the same developer you could also easily get things added on as you thought of them in the future.

When it comes to costs I have no idea whatsoever. If it was going to help me make £x thousand a week for the foreseeable future then it would be worth at least x to me. I'm sure a developer reading this could give you a rough idea.

Escapee seems like he could do it quite quickly.
Perhaps I'll start with a browser app and develop documentation for an API solution to be implemented at a later stage.

This thread has already helped me even without real automation, as I have now changed my homepage from.
http://soccer.betfair.com/
to.
http://search.betfair.com/ResultsRSS.do?query=

Which means I can open dozens of tabs instantly (my browser crashes If I open say 60 tabs simultaneously onto soccer.betfair.com as it is quite heavy).

And using a simple Autohotkey script, that I created using a combination of modified examples and autoscriptwriter.

Like you say Fred, at the moment it's very much a case of cobbling things together.

I'm limited not only by data requests (which only apply on days with a lot of games that are all low quality, meaning low turnover / profit expectancy per market), but also by browser capacity. Firefox doesn't utilise the power of multicore processors, and if I have anything over about 70 markets open in my browser there is a risk of it crashing. Furthermore, due to memory leak, I need to restart my browser every 3 hours or so.

Firefox is much better than IE though (for me at least) and google chrome is still a bit buggy in my experience (although it is much faster, so it may make sense switching).

After an overly long and pretty much fruitless google seession I failed to find any 'elegant' ways of firefox automation and or control. It seems that this is prevented by design in order to remove a bunch of the security issues that Internet Explorer has.

But I can kind of kludge it and rely on the behaviour of "firefox -new-tab url" loading a new tab on the browser with focus.



Taken from a earlier post, Are these the markets you want ?
1) Correct Score
2) Total Goals
3) HT Score
4) Over 4.5 goals
5) Over 5.5 goals
6) Over 6.5 goals


And a final recap of the specifications before I start coding:

An API application which functions pretty much like the standard betfair interface, but with an extra menu option: "Soccer - Firefox Launcher"

The "Soccer - Firefox Launcher" menu option will show a list of all todays Football Matches.( as shown on this image http://tinypic.com/r/2d7ydc5/7 )

The first time a football match is selected from the list:
Six Firefox browsers will be launched, each with one tab containing a betfair market for the football match selected, from the list of markets I have set out above.

Second and subsequent selections of matches from the list:
The 6 firefox browsers will each be loaded with an additional tab containing a betfair market for the newly selected match.

The browsers are to be organised so that:
The 6 browsers each contain multiple tabs of a single type of market from the list.
e.g. Browser1 will only have 'Correct Score Markets' for each of the matches selected, Browser2 will only have 'Total Goals Markets' etc etc...

The tabs are to be organised so that:
All the different markets for the same match will appear at the same tab position on the browsers.
e.g.
Browser1-Tab1 will contain Correct Score market for match 'A',
Browser1-Tab2 will contain Correct Score market for match 'B', etc etc.
Browser2-Tab1 will contain Total Goals market for match 'A',
Browser2-Tab2 will contain Total Goals market for match 'B', etc etc.


I Think that just about covers it, Please agree to those specifications or point out anything you think I have ommitted or any other issues you have.



Security:
In a previous post you mentioned ( quite wisely ) a point or two concerning  security.
I want to make this quite clear to you some of the security implications of this solution so you have enough info to make a balanced decision.

This solution requires access to the Betfair API to gain a list of the market ID's of all the markets that you might require loading to firefox browsers.
As a result of this API access requirement, you will need to log on with your username and password details through this proposed API application.

So that in turn means that if I ( or anyone who provided a solution designed as specified ) were an evil scammer, I could write in code that passes on your personal details, empty your account and retire to the Bahamas.

I'm not trying to allay your fears here, ( in fact I'm probably doing the opposite ) And I'm reasonably certain that you'd probably be aware of such things anyway. But just in case you weren't, I thought the issue worth airing.
In conclusion: Any program you put on your computer can have security implications, Any program that you type in your personal details to and grant internet access to, even more so.


So I ask you to:
A) Confirm the specifications I have set out. ( or ammend them )
B) Think about the security issues I raised, decide if you trust me enough and if so confirm that I should proceed to produce the application.


Fitting it in arround other commitments, I would guesstimate deivery arround the middle or latter part of next week.

That's correct Escapee.
Ideally the browser windows would also position themselves correctly across my screens. Currently I have done this with AHK, so it should be quite simple.

Just two things to consider:
1) It would be handy if the app worked in such a way that the user can select matches simultaneously rather than click: wait for markets to load, click: wait for markets to load, clik: wait for markets to load etc.
2) If matches are selected simultaneously the app would have to control how they are loaded based on the number: If there are let's say two matches loaded (6 browser windows with two tabs each), it can just do it instantly. If there are twelve matches loaded, the app needs to manage this to avoid the browser crashing.

Good News and Bad News

First the Good news
I've Got it working !

The Bad News
.... But it only works reliably with betfair lite. Using betfairs standard web pages leads to occasionally getting a market loading in the wrong browser. 


Basically. my medium spec laptop is creaking under the strain of loading 6 betfair web pages simultainiously.

In layman's terms:
If I want to launch and control an Internet Explorer from a program, its possible to do so with quite firm control.
But with firefox this method is not available and the communication/control link is akin to shouting a conversation accross a crowded pub. When the noise level ( cpu usage ) gets above a certain level parts of the conversation get lost in the hubub.

Betfairs standard market web pages have a java applet or two which require a fair bit of CPU resources to load and also steals 'focus' intermittently whilst loading.
Loading 6 markets at the same time compounds these issues to the point of unreliability.
Whereas loading 6 betfair lite markets at the same time does not push the CPU so much and it all works fine.


To get it to work for standard betfair, I'm going to have to find a different method of controlling a firefox browser other than:
(CWnd*) m_pBrowser[i]->SetForegroundWindow();

I'm not optomistic about finding another method after spending 8 hours googling it already.




Feeling a bit glum about seemingly being so close to a solution but in reality, being quite far.

ho hum

After ammending and Testing, it does appear to work well with a 5 second gap between loading markets.


Investor, What do you think about it taking 30 seconds for each match ?

i.e. Select ( click on ) a match, it takes 30 seconds to load 6 markets before allowing you to select ( click on ) another match and repeating the process.


Or  betfair lite ? ( only about 4 seconds per group of 6 markets )

Seems like you got quite far with this.

Yea.. It's pretty much done.

But I'm not very happy with 30 seconds per match ( 6 markets )

Also, it doesn't have the extra capabilities you requested:
A) to select all the matches required before starting the loading process.
B) remember and position the browser windows.

It does everything else as per my spec outline though.




I'd need to cut out a few of existing features ( such as autobetting ) and half finished knobs 'n whistles from my API program before I ship you a version.

But as I'm not actually happy with 30 Second/match thing, Not happy with the very tenuous method of controlling firefox I'm using, and it doesn't have the extra bits you wanted, and I'm getting a little bit of cold feet syndrome over just giving away my API.

So I thought I'd explore a few other avenues tonight and see if I can resolve a few of these issues or if we should just go with what I've produced so far despite its drawbacks.


I'll get back to you tommorow after I've worked and slept on it.