Argos Stock Checker - CheckArgos.com (Jul 15 - Preview of new site now avaialbe)

Deleted User wrote: »

Did checkargos not used to do more than poll all locations for stock availability? Clearence/Popular doesn't seem to work no matter which category or what store.

Yes, but Argos blocked my IP address one weekend that there was a 3 for 2 toy sale on

Now blocking the IP address of a application that is running on the cloud wouldnt be the best way of actually blocking someone, so I was able to just literally shut that server down and spin up a new one, but I was obviously causing a problem for argos.

That weekend their site kept crashing, I guess they were overloaded. They probably saw the majority of the requests coming from my server so shut it down.

I was previously making 40 separate requests to argos every time one person came to a product page, now add to that people setting up check for change or some other equivalent type things and you can see the requests pilling up

So in an effort to be a good citizen to argos, I implemented a store picker screen. So now you can only check up to 10 stores at a time. I felt this was a decent compromise as getting to more than 10 stores probably wasn't realistic.
You only need to do the store selection screen once per browser (its saved in loca storage, can be changed too)

Plus, as someone based in the west/midlands, knowing something was in stock in Tralee or Dublin was never really much use to me!

This change would reduce Checkargos load on argos by at least 75%, so went with it. They haven't banned my IP since so hopefully it was enough for them.

It was a pity for people posting bargains though. The traffic for the site was pretty heavily impacted by this as there is now less reason to link to it here. I actually played around with giving out links to people that would allow them to check all stores, but it didn't really work out. They would just post screen shots of the website (which is fair enough I guess!)

Deleted User wrote: »

Did checkargos not used to do more than poll all locations for stock availability? Clearence/Popular doesn't seem to work no matter which category or what store.

To answer your actual question that I clearly read wrong.

It looks like the clearance part is broken alright, I guess they changed something!

tommycahir wrote: »

Checkargos is one of my go to sites for checking price history etc.

Just wondering if you have the source code on github somewhere or it can be shared wouldn't mind having a poke around with a local instance to see if I could tweak a few things?

It's not currently on public github repo, but I might give it a comb through in the next few weeks and release it