Developng a BOT

My understanding is you need both.

Also, stefan at bfexplorer does his platform that is Visual Basic and Visual C# and does some custom work.

I write everything in python. Super easy.

the guy that developed BetSender bot did my own personal bot .... very helpful and good price.

undern is still alive and kicking

I'd pick c#. Mainly because it's the more popular language. That means more resources of various types for that language. Easier to find high quality code examples online etc.

Go to the Betfair developers forum and see if there are any examples of what you want to do there. I started writing a bot in visual basic from the examples there, however I gave up on it when I realised Betfair were replacing the old api system with a new one.
  I have a number of profitable strategies that i need to automate, but I need learn how the new api works.
     If you want to take a shortcut, there are a number of software vendors with software that allows you to easily automate lots of options that are not available on the exchange.

Most of the available software lets you link to excel so if your strategy only relies on the info from Betfair it should be easy enough for you to just knock up a spreadsheet and save yourself the hassle of coding something from scratch especially as time is money if you're missing out on £1K a week at the moment. If it needs to be grabbing from other sources might be worth you getting the bare bones coded up and entering the important variables yourself, easily get something done for under £1K as most coders have the bare bones already done and at least you've have a decent starting point for any future bots rather than having some quickly cobbled together code you can't rely on. If it really makes that money it'd make sense to have it done correctly and quickly

Send me your winning strategy and I'll write it for you for free.....

Seriously though:

Using  excel linked to Gruss (for example) is an easy way to get started but if you've got any sort of coding experience then you should definitely write the whole thing properly as it'll give you much more versatility. It's not just about placing bets, it's also about recording data  and you can do that in much better depth if you write the thing yourself.

I think you'd have to be insane to get someone else to write your robot, not just because if it's any good they'll steel it but because your understanding of it and ability to develop it will be greatly reduced.

The new API is p1ss easy to use and learning how it works is very informative in itself.
I was surprised to see on the developer forum that some people are having trouble porting as I'd have thought anyone who could deal with the old one should be easily capable of re-coding for the new one. I'm looking forward to the switch off now in the hope it might knock out a bunch of old bots that haven't made the transition.

It really doesn't matter what language you use - any is fine. Personally I'm using Python because it's easy and it works across several platforms.

Everyone always talks about Gruss, but you might also want to look at market feeder pro.  It uses it's own simple scripting language that allows you to build your bot from simple drop down menus.  However, beneath that user friendly interface lies an incredibly powerful piece of software that allows you to automate any strategy that you care to wish to.

If you take out a subscription for whatever period they will write a trigger for you (they call the individual 'bots' triggers), so you can get your solution automated and tested incredibly cheaply compared to getting a coder to write you a bot from scratch.  The website also has a friendly forum that is helpful in answering any questions.

I appreciate that this reads just like some sort of p.r. piece for the software, but I'm just a user who is very satisfied with how the software allows me to automate my strategies, and I want as many people as possible to use it so that the company makes enough money to keep going.

If anyone I know ever uses a bot which is an insult to other users he
won't be using no bot no more,
that I can guarantee...

The new API is so simple, any modern language should have you up and running within an hour. As a professional coder, I'm going to tell you now that C# is going to fry your brain as a COBOL guy, you will feel much more comfortable with Python I expect. Do not go near Visual Basic unless you have no other choice.

we need more bots on here definitely

Thanks for all the replies. I definitely want to have a go at coding this myself and it is interesting that a few of you are recommending Python (a language I had not really heard of until we went to a school options parents evening about a year ago). My son is now learning Python at school so I might give that a go.

"we need more bots on here definitely".

Did you know Oceanforce, in reality the forum hasn't existed since 2008, its all done by posting bots. I thought you'd have known that!

No no no you have to have some real posters or else the forum bots wouldn't have anyone to jump in front of ;)

There is a hands held set of posts introducing the new API NG and Python on my blog, give it a try

http://markatsmartersig.wordpress.com/category/betfair-api-ng/

Thanks for that Olias, that's just what I've been looking for!

try the disappearing act bot,
when a horse is trading at say $1.50 you use the bot to display say $3.00,
as soon as someone trys to take the $3.00 it will disappear before they get matched,
then put it up again and again causing endless amounts of annoyance for the
people who think they are really missing the price,
lots of people are using these bots to try and drive up the price

FATMax, my thoughts on that is that it has to do with the cross-matching that BF uses and not an outside bot.

TOTGA

Who are you trying to fool!

I've just been trying to go through Olias' admirable guide, and have decided to abandon everything halfway through Step 5.

For the record I was a professional software developer back in the early days of punched cards, assembler language and EBCDIC. These days I develop in C# for myself, and happen to have the dubious honour of being slugged 40% PC.

All this is a sick joke.

There are better and more profitable ways I can spend my time.

I plan to return to producing revenue for Betfair when I can't think of anything better to do.

The new API is definitely simpler once you've got the damned thing set up

You need to do a lot of messing around with SSL certificates, application keys, session tokens, http configuration etc to get to that point though.

I've been trying to follow Olias' guide and I keep getting the following error going through Session 5...

c:\Users\Ross\Documents\PythonStuff>c:\Openssl-Win64\bin\openssl
WARNING: can't open config file: C:\OpenSSL-Win64\bin\openssl.cfg
OpenSSL> genrsa -out client-2048.key 2048
Loading 'screen' into random state - done
Generating RSA private key, 2048 bit long modulus
..................................+++
....................+++
e is 65537 (0x10001)
OpenSSL> req -new -config c:\OpenSSL-Win64\bin\openssl.cnf -key client-2048.key
-out client-2048.csr
error on line 19 of c:\OpenSSL-Win64\bin\openssl.cnf
3344:error:0E065068:configuration file routines:STR_COPY:variable has no value:.
\crypto\conf\conf_def.c:618:line 19
error in req
OpenSSL>

I have tried this several times on different computers (32 bit and 64 bit) but with the same result!

Why don't you bot using geeks bet properly instead of annoying everyone with your £3 bots.

bet properly = lose ?

Firstly DO NOT bother with the old API - it is due to be retired this month.

When you write your bot... make sure you build in some safety valves.

For example...

1. Logic to stop it spending your entire bank, you might not intend for it to do this, but an act or omission in terms of logic might give rise to this behaviour

2. Stop you racking up charges - the old free API for example charges you if you exceed 1000 bets posted within the last 60m period, the free API is due to have its pricing structure clarified Jan 2015 (currently I believe it is free without restriction)

Worth reading up on the API documentation, although check back often as things are liable to change with the introduction of the new API recently / the retirement of the old API

There is a 'test' environment, so you can run your bot without fear of it ruining you, personally I've never used it. The way I have tested mine is to just control the exposure, have plenty of logging, and keep an eye on it. One crude way to do this is to transfer your bank over to another 'wallet', leaving only the amount you need to run your bot in the wallet for the market(s) on which your bot is being targeted.

I use Java BTW, but have used Excel in the past.

If you've been out of the saddle for a while you should expect a reasonable learning curve, aside from the programming language itself, there is the API, the SSL, and so on.

There are plenty of code demos available that should allow you to get up and running. Also the forum is pretty good.

One of the first things you should try is the visualiser, it allows you to call the API from within a browser (no programming at all!). I suggest getting a good browser installed (Chrome) which also allows you to easily see the API requests (F12 for debug tools). Then use something like http://jsonformatter.curiousconcept.com which will convert the JSON into readable form. All helps in understanding what is going on.

Don't be surprised if you still end up spending significant amounts of time on this. You might not be slavishly pushing bets through yourself, btut instead you may be watching your bot or liable to be tinkering with it and also with ideas for new bots. ;-)

Good luck.

BTW I also run stuff on Ubuntu

The API reference has SSL instructions for this platform, and it all worked fine for me by following the instructions on the site.