XML web services for betting sites ??

Jim Kernsey

Hi

I’m working on my final year project for college at the min, part of this project is to have a betting odds comparison service. Something similar to www.britodds.com, www.oddschecker.com, the problem is I don’t know where to begin, as far as I can gather, these sites use a web service with xml, but I don’t see any links on any of the major websites i.e. www.paddypower.com, www.ladbrokes.com . I’d appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction, e.g. online tutorials, news articles or code examples, etc.

I’ve spent age’s googling and I’m still none the wiser.

The project itself consists of a J2ME enabled phone which will communicate to a J2EE server via Bluetooth (hopefully!!), the server is going to be continually checking the different websites like www.paddypower.com etc. to find the best odds, and these odds will then be sent to the phone where the user can complete the bet.


Thanks in advance

aidan_walsh

I would be very doubtful if any of these sites would offer a free XML feed. Your best bet might be to explore the sites you want to use primarily (pick maybe 2 initially, and expand on it if you have time come the end of the project), get all the details you can regarding the page names you're interested in and their structures, and create some simple spiders that can harvest the values you want and keep them in a database. these should be threaded and can be set to update the values at in interval you specify quite easily by looping the threads and making them sleep at the end of the loop.

Its a messy solution, I know, but its either that of feeds of American sports...

Hobbes

Why don't you contact paddypower and ask them? If the project has merit they may certainly let you use their systems.

At worst they may be able to point you in the direction of what to look for.

Also ask them is there an XML standard for betting information? would be cool if your product supported it (or created one).

[edit]
I would refrain from using spiders or taking information without their permission, as some places get annoyed. I think for you project even if you set up a dummy site which fed old/dummy data to your application would be satisfactory.

Zaltais

You tried signing up as an affiliate and seeing what's on offer?

Jim Kernsey

Thanks for your advice

I don't really want to go down the route of using spiders and such, these pages are dynamic and change almost every couple of seconds.

I emailed paddypower and told them what i was doing, but i got no response. I might try emailing a few others.

I might have to create a dummy, i'm sure it would be fine, but it would be cool to use a live site.

thanks again

mr_angry

In my experience, such sites are rarely stuctured with proper metadata. I'd imagine you'd be better starting with a dummy server that creates properly structured files.

http://www.klipfarm.com has a list of XML feeds spouted by all sorts of different sites. There may be a betting site in there somewhere if you have a look.

Hobbes

Jim Kernsey wrote:

I emailed paddypower and told them what i was doing, but i got no response. I might try emailing a few others.

Forget emailing. Find out where the offices are and phone them directly. Even speak to HR and explain what you are doing.