so maybe this really isn't a contest. its more like a job. so here it is: come up with a way to build a website that stores the completed card auctions from ebay. this database must be searchable by registered users only. also, i want statistics tied to each active player (majors and minors) that are also searchable by a specified date range. i also want the ability to search the completed auctions by a specified date range.
the best answer will get a daniel schlereth 2008 bowman chrome draft refractor auto #ed 103/500. if its a really good, workable, detailed plan that i could put into action (along with you,) i'm offering up a 2005 bowman chrome ricky romero blue refractor auto #ed 023/150. this card won't be a garunteed give away though, but at worst i'll give away the schlereth. what say you? i'm going to let this run for about one week. submit your ideas to the comments, and feel free to submit as many as you like.
1 comment:
First you need to be able to crawl ebay's completed auctions. This has been done before. I'm not sure if ebay has a published api. If so, this will not be hard. If not, this will be hard and will also be prone to breaking when ebay changes page layouts. It is also possible that eBay will not let you do this. Since you must be a registered user of eBay to see completed auctions, you must agree to their terms of service.
You also need a stat source, so you'll have to figure that out too. Is it possible to get complete stats in a database for free? I doubt it. You can crawl a free site like Yahoo or BaseballReference, but it's probably better to just pay whatever it costs to get the stats in database form.
Decide exactly what you want the user to be able to do. Think about the ideal website you could build. Write sentences that explain what the user can do. Circle every verb in those sentences. Rough rule of thumb: every verb will cost you four hours to implement, test, and deploy.
Decide which data you need to allow the user to do the things you've described.Rough rule of thumb: each data field will cost four hours, though this can vary widely depending on the overall complexity of the data model.
Decide how you want to store data. A database like mySQL is a very good option. You could store data in plain text files, which would be quicker to implement, but that will make searching very difficult and very slow when you start to have millions of auctions.
Decide how you want to code the pages. Plain HTML? Using a little JavaScript? Or a lot? Do you want to use ASP.Net? PHP? How do you want to access your data? Direct SQL connection? Web service?
Decide how you want to host the site. Most likely you will pay someone else to do it.
That's the absolute rock-bottom basics. Assuming you've never made any of these decisions before, I'd say it'll take you 40 hours to research and answer these questions.
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