Automatic Updating

[badassrocker]

I'm an affiliate marketer and I generally create price comparison sites. I was wondering if there was a way to have the prices automatically updated when a merchant changes their price for a specific product. For example, if I have a list of online stores that sell a certain Nike shoe and the prices for the shoe that each online store offers are listed, and one of the companies change their price, then I have to manually check their site and change the price, then reupload.

Is there any way for me to have a script that automatically reads the price of the shoe off of each online store and automatically have it listed on my website? That way I wouldn't have to waste time constantly checking multiple websites and keeping the prices updated manually.

I noticed some large scale sites compare prices, such as http://www.nextag.com , and that can't mean that they have a task force of people sitting there checking prices all of the time. There's got to be a way to have it automatically update.

If anyone knows how to do this or has any suggestions, I would very much appreciate it because it would make my life a whole lot easier. Thanks

[Khalid Ali]

there are few things you can do,but keep in mind that this is a task well beyond JavaScripts domain.

1. Write an aplication(server side) using Java(jsp,servlet) or PHP that when passed a url of the site,looks for a particular set of words and then retrieve the price.

2. If those sites are your own customer then you can have them all create an XML file that has entries for all products.And when ever you load your pages you check those XML files and update/show your prices...

I know..not really a piece of cake suggestion..sorry..

[badassrocker]

Wow, that isn't really a piece of cake...lol Well, do you know of anyone that would be interested in creating something like this for me, or any tutorials or anything like that? I have no idea how to do any of that stuff, even with javascript, I just copy and paste, then change little things. But writing something from scratch, especially what you're talking about, sounds way beyond anything I could fathom without some help from someone or a tutorial (if there is one for something like that) of some kind. Thanks for the reply.

[badassrocker]

Also, is there a FrontPage type thing (WYSIWYG) for xml or anything I could use to create what I'm wanting?