Argh!

[mathare]

The Racing Post have a new website in beta phase which means I'm going to need to do some serious updates to Auto-Sys before it goes fully live ;fire

[Win2Win]

Another new site!!! Are we talking the whole site, or the HTML racecards?

[mathare]

A whole new site with a new domain name and new structure ;fire

I haven't got as far as comparing the HTML against the old site because it's still in beta

[Win2Win]

Oh dear :ermmm

It's very sllloooooowww loading the cards, and has locked up my browser twice. Looks like it using PHP, Ajax, Flash, and a few other gizmo's.

The racecards have no page address!!! Although I should be able to pull the basic scripting off the server and see them, I done that with the logon for the present site. I'll have a piddle about o Tuesday.

[mathare]

The racecards have no page address!!!Oh now that would be BAD for Auto-Sys

[Win2Win]

Oh now that would be BAD for Auto-Sys
It's worse than that Mat....it's using Ajax with Javascript, and all the data is cached in an array, so no racecard code at all. :splapme

Looks 99.9% at the moment you'll have to switch to the Sporting Life, or something. :yikes:

As for the little boxes with each runner, I can only just see the things on my 1900x1400 screen, never mind click them!!!

[mathare]

I can't use the Sporting Life code, it's really not conducive to what Auto-Sys does

[Win2Win]

Most other sites list all the races on seperate pages.

[mathare]

What else is there apart from Sporting Life and Racing Post?

There's Turftrax but I never really got on with their cards

[Mattw07]

What else is there apart from Sporting Life and Racing Post?


have you tried attheraces.com ?

[MattR]

gg.com list them but don't know if the format's any good for what you need Mat.

[Win2Win]

have you tried attheraces.com ?


gg.com list them but don't know if the format's any good for what you need Mat.
Both list the races on seperate pages I think., although GG is OK, as they update the result on the same page, and I use their results page, RP one annoys me, and SL keeps crashing.

[Win2Win]

The only full page is the SL, just been through all the ones I know. Unless I can find a way to parse the array.

[crazybadger]

Yeah I got an email about this a few weeks back. The really bad things is that they are going to charge for certain functionality on the site. I went and had a look at the beta today and it looks like Forecast prices might be part of what you get when you pay...not cool.

On that note I checked out SportingLife fellas and I noticed they had some different forecast prices. I'm wondering how this will affect those systems that use forecast price as a factor? If the stats/previous results are based on RP and SL has different forecast than wouldnt it change the results?

[barrelmaniac]

Yeah I got an email about this a few weeks back. The really bad things is that they are going to charge for certain functionality on the site. I went and had a look at the beta today and it looks like Forecast prices might be part of what you get when you pay...not cool.

On that note I checked out SportingLife fellas and I noticed they had some different forecast prices. I'm wondering how this will affect those systems that use forecast price as a factor? If the stats/previous results are based on RP and SL has different forecast than wouldnt it change the results?


Thats what I was also thinking :doh

[Win2Win]

Sporting Life F/c odds are pants, you would have to use Oddschecker, or a similar excellent service (just to keep BBC viewers happy!!!!!)

[ginty]

Hey,

I too have had a quick look at the new racingpost site and I don't think there is much doom and gloom. It will take me a little bit of time to figure out all of the HTTP-GET requests but its looking like it might actually make my life much, much easier.

As an example, have a look at these urls (after you've logged in to racingpost.com of course):
- http://www.racingpost.com/horses/card_runners.sd?race_id=469214&r_date=2008-11-26&type=sc_
- http://www.racingpost.com/horses/card_betting_forecast.sd?race_id=469215&r_date=2008-11-26
- http://www.racingpost.com/horses/quick_results.sd?quick_fast_race_id=102984

You can get the runners and B/F with little effort... and the format is v.nice to work with.

Yes, there may be a few more requests to the server required but, really, firing off another request makes little difference (depending on your scraping solution I guess).

I'm sure with a little bit more research I will have a complete working solution. I already use rp raceIds so my data model remains unchanged.. probably a day's work for me to make the switch to the new site.

My only fear is that certain services (e.g. B/F) will be a paid member's service in the nearing future... something I would like to keep well away from.

[ginty]

Yeah I got an email about this a few weeks back. The really bad things is that they are going to charge for certain functionality on the site. I went and had a look at the beta today and it looks like Forecast prices might be part of what you get when you pay...not cool.

From http://www.racingpost.com/help/help_centre.sd

"All of the beta version of racingpost.com is currently free, but a subscription will be introduced for some premium content.

More details of subscriptions will be available soon but in the meantime, you can view all content."

:(