After more research, experimenting and thinking......

I've decided to stop work on the existing solution and ( if you want ) write a new program from scratch.

I think going with your idea: 'List of matches with checkboxes' and then launching all the browsers with the markets for the selected matches at 2-5 second intevals is the way to go.

I tried it with 6 matches ( 36 markets ) and it took about 2 1/2 minutes before they'd all loaded and the cpu usage dropped back. But I'd guess that 2 1/2 minutes is a lot shorter than the time it'd take you to load 36 markets manually and you'd just have to select the matches and press the 'Launch' button and leave it to cook your cpu.


For various reasons such as:
Ammending my own API to have checkboxes on the tree menu is a non-trivial task.....
Controlling firefox firmly and properly is nigh on impossible...
Launching all the required matches and markets from 1 click is better from the users perspective and the firefox control perspective ....
So I thought drop my API and write a dedicated solution.

I'll create a mock up of it and upload an image explaining its proposed functionality and features. ( probably do this after midnight )

And we'll take it from there.

Great!
I look forward to seeing it in action.

And what option ? either A or B ?

Nice clean layout!
Looking at this, I agree that option A is better.
Three points:

1) I notice a login at the top, does that mean I don't need to log in separately in the browser?
2) If it's easy to do, I would prefer the list to look like this:

11:30    Spain U19 v Armenia U19
14:00    Lithuania U19 v Israel U19
18:00    Anderlecht v AEK
18:00    Besiktas v Porto
18:00    CSKA Sofia v Rapid Vienna
etc.

In order of start time (with time showing), instead of alphabetically. That way, I can use the Football Market Launcher as my only frame of reference, and I no longer need to check the forum.

3) How will it handle games that are technically on tomorrow? For instance, if I want to load the following:
23:15    Avai v Emelec
00:30    New York Red Bulls v New England
01:00    Joe Public FC v Columbus
01:45    San Jose v Newells
will it allow me to do so?

1) I notice a login at the top, does that mean I don't need to log in separately in the browser?

This logs the program into the 'Free' API. ( not the same as the web interface )
You will need to have one firefox browser logged into a betfair session aswell, Prior to pressing 'Launch'. In order for the browsers launched by the program to exploit the 'shared cookie' behaviour of firefox and hence be logged on as well.




2) If it's easy to do, I would prefer the list to look like this:

11:30    Spain U19 v Armenia U19
14:00    Lithuania U19 v Israel U19
18:00    Anderlecht v AEK
18:00    Besiktas v Porto
18:00    CSKA Sofia v Rapid Vienna

Not Possible unfortunately
I'd already thought of doing it that way ( and tried ) but due to the limitations of the 'free api': You can only put in 5 'getMarket()' requests per minute and the event Start time is returned from that call.( well it is for Horse Racing, not sure about football )
If you want to pay £200/Month for full API access then it can be done, but on the free api it would take 5 long minutes to get the info for 25 matches... only then could it produce 'todays matches' list.

*eventStartTime is also a data field returned from getEvents()
( which is what I use to get the market ID'd and has unlimited requests per minute) But although its documented as such, it only ever contains 01/01/01 00:00:00.


3) How will it handle games that are technically on tomorrow?
Currently it works out todays date and then gets the events for that date under 'Football - Fixtures'
If you want enhancements to this then I could look into it.

Escapee, I also have a requirement that I am willing to pay for.

It's really quite a simple requirement, although how easy it is to implement in BF's API I don't know.

I want all the markets I have bets in listed in a single screen (scrolling is fine) ordered by start (kick off) time. For each market I want to see my current position and bets as well as the current best back and lay prices.

I realize showing current position (green/red) is problematic when there are more than say 3 outcomes (limited screen real estate), but markets with more than 3 outcomes can be excluded.

I would much prefer if the list were populated automatically, although I don't know if this is possible thru the BF API.

I'd have to think about whether manually populating the list is worth my while.

I don't need to be able to trade thru this screen, although if I could it would be a bonus.

Update frequency isn't an issue (every 30 seconds would be fine). I don't trade in play.

Essentially, my requirement is just to keep track of all the markets I have bets in and be notified when something of significance changes (a bet taken, change in back/lay prices, start time approaching).

If you want to take this further contact me at pxbradleyATgmailDOTcom

Investor

1)....

2) Your suggestions of:
A) Running the program  the night before wouldn't currently work as it only looks for matches for todays date.
B) Auto starting it when you boot up the PC has the problem of username/password to get over, although these could be encrypted in a file.

Off the top of my head.... If the thread you currently look at to get the times is pretty much the same URL day in day out
And the format of the information is stable..... then it might be possible to automatically parse it and extract the times 'n match them up to the fixture names that way.


3) I think ( but I haven't checked ) that the early morning matches problem probably doesn't exist.
I suspect that those matches take place on 'Todays Date' in local time and hence would appear under 'Todays Fixtures' depite being it actually tommorrow from our GMT point of view.

I can't do it myself, but for those prices I'll happily arb bf forum and rentacoder

Investor, I seem to have locked myself out of email [>o]( or the server is down )
Tuesday sounds good.

I've just checked and San Jose v Newells is available under Todays Matches ( 21st Oct ), Which is what the program is looking for.

That's somewhat out my price range. I might have gone up to a thousand.

But thanks for the response.

Escapee, if you have a contact email I can send you a brief description and you can let me know if it's something you'd take on.

I was fancying a diversion so I've had a crack at your simple tool Investor.

I've taken a different approach. I don't know how to write stand-alone applications so mine is web based.

Same as Escapee, I found a few issues with firefox. It's not easily possible to take control of its tabs, plus a few settings need to be set.

It might not work as it's dependent on configuration but here's my mock-up http://bit.ly/cz3Jd2   

The idea is that you open 7 browser windows and point them all to that address. You then choose which market type you want to show in each browser and choose a browser where you'll select events.

I got the links using a combination of web scraping (to get the coupons) and API (to get the market variants). Took less than an hour to cobble that together in PHP as I already had some usable code and insight.

Making the interactive web page took a lot longer and was the interesting bit. Been ages since I last made a page. My presentation skills haven't improved any.

That page

http://community.betfair.com/markets/go
/thread/view/94118/25834553/Live_and_In-Play_Football_Matches_This_Week

Yep I kinda agree it seemed to be getting very overblown, only reason for mentioning the scraping route was it avoids using any logins and could be probably whacked up on any free webspace especially as betfair provide so many rss/xml feeds for all the football markets with associated marketIds etc

It looks good Fred, I waited with the reply, because I wanted to look at the app properly first (after the day's matches had finished). I tried it and it works, but for some reason I get some messages saying firefox prevented popup windows from opening on some occassions.

It's also difficult to see how it functions without the pages actually loading. Can you set it up to do that, or is that going to cause some kind of issue?

I think Escapee is doing a great job, and the end result should be that I simply select x games, and all the relevant markets are loaded. Doing it through an app like this is the fastest way I can imagine (while going through the browser).

After trying your web app in chrome as well, I found it works, but opens new windows for each market loaded rather than loading it in tabs.

I agree that ultimately this is as you call it "a job for a multi-window bespoke API application" (or multi-window and multi-tab). In any case, an app to control browser windows will be extremely useful both to give me ideas for further improvements, and as a future backup for when there are API issues.

It's quite a big step to move to the API, and getting that right is going to be more of a commitment.

One idea I've had already is to have a template for markets loaded.

Let's say I load the following as standard:
Screen 1: Correct Score
Screen 2: Total Goals
Screen 3: Half Time Score
Screen 4: Over/Under 1.5 Goals
Screen 5: Over/Under 2.5 Goals
Screen 6: Over/Under 3.5 Goals

If I load 8 matches, three of which are already in the second half, some of these aren't going to load properly. There could be a default setting when a market for a game is closed: go to [market type]

There could also be shortkeys so that with a simple keystroke, the layout of the screens for a selected match changes to

Screen 1: Correct Score
Screen 2: Total Goals
Screen 3: Match Odds
Screen 4: Over/Under 2.5 Goals
Screen 5: Over/Under 3.5 Goals
Screen 6: Over/Under 4.5 Goals


Which would be handy for instance if two goals are scored.

I'm sure there are plenty of ideas like this (suggestions welcome). When the problem of wasting time loading markets is overcome with a browser control app, I can look at what features an API app should have.

lol mine only looks good because it uses dummy pages, makes it appear fast and responsive. I didn't use real betfair pages because I gave the link out on here - betfair servers take enough abuse as it is. To be honest, I haven't even tried real pages, not much point as I can't even overcome simple issues with firefox.

I think the app would probably have to be written as a firefox extension or embed the browser within itself in order to fully take control of firefox. That's out of my depth.

Your idea for further control over group mix and layouts sounds like it would be confusing in use to me, but that's all easily possible with a proper app.

Anyway, I tried and failed, I'll leave it to Escapee.

Yes, I'm into automation using PHP. I like tinkering with bots.

Yes confusing from users perspective I thought. I've changed my mind. It doesn't matter. It only has one user, you, and if it is programmed to behave how you want it to behave under changing market conditions then that's got to be good for you.

Hi Fred,
I had a quick look at your web page and was quite impressed, Well maybe not visually but from a coders point of view you definitely possess some daemon skills and could easily outclass a lot of alledged programmers I know.
I tip my hat in respect to you sir....


In one post you mentioned 'I was making a meal of it' And baby jesus mentioned 'Yep I kinda agree it seemed to be getting very overblown', which I assume he is refering to the bespoke solution.

After getting over the initial dent to my pride, I realised that if two people were saying such things then in all likelyhood there was some substance to the matter.
Thinking about it further I summised that no one had actually critised my work for 20 years, and although I don't really understand what you both mean by those comments, It would be benefitial to me if I did. I might learn something.

So I would be greatful to you both if you would each expand on what you mean, where in your view have I err'ed in this process etc.
what have I made a meal of or overblown.

I shall take it on the chin and hopefully be a little wiser for it.


Many thanks in advance.