Comments on: Introducing Amazon.com Price Drops

By: Raj

Raj — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:30:15 +0000

It may be too much to ask but would you mind to share the source code and db structure?

By: Paul Ellis

Paul Ellis — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:15:27 +0000

I actually only track the top 100 bestsellers in a variety of categories. My implementation is all PHP/MySQL and uses their RSS feeds. I have though about switching over to AWS though. It wouldn’t be hard, but I’d just have to find the time, and it works fine right now.

I have our server pull down data on a couple of thousand best selling products multiple times each day and put it in a database. Then the database is analyzed to find any products whose price has dropped over the last two weeks to a month. I create a new table with that data and sort by smallest to largest (largest discount to smallest).

For the widget on the homepage I exclude cellphones from being shown because their pricing structure (tons of phones are deeply discounted from their “retail” price) made them dominate the list.

By: Raj

Raj — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:21:28 +0000

Are you keeping track of all the price drop(s) using amazon web services? I would be interested in knowing more about the actual code and architecture you are using considering amazon has millions of items listed. Thank you for great work.

By: NukePrice

NukePrice — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 04:37:19 +0000

Check the Best Amazon Price Watch Site:
http://www.nukeprice.com

By: Paul Ellis

Paul Ellis — Tue, 27 May 2008 05:38:46 +0000

Amod,

I’m pretty sure it does. It pulls the prices down via RSS, and I believe (~98% sure) those prices are included. IIRC, they use some HTML/CSS/Javascript to obscure the price so you have to click on something. However if you are parsing the code, it doesn’t care that some piece of content shouldn’t be shown, because the price is still visible in the HTML.

By: Amod

Amod — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:09:14 +0000

Is your app able to get price drops on items where amazon list price is not displayed and you have to “Click here to see price”? Thank you.

By: Paul Ellis

Paul Ellis — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:03:42 +0000

Glad you like it Yan. I’ll have to see how I could possibly incorporate images into the widget. If you click “More Price Drops…” it does show the whole list (not just the top 7) with images.

By: Yan

Yan — Fri, 23 May 2008 03:06:34 +0000

This is very cool. I think you should include images in the widget

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:18:17 +0000

Here is another site I usually use. It works very well.
http://www.nukeprice.com

By: Kevin M. Keating

Kevin M. Keating — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:52:23 +0000

Very cool. Nice work.

By: Tyler Reber

Tyler Reber — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:33:28 +0000

I saw this when I checked the site this morning and was wondering if there was gonna be a ‘press release’. Very cool feature!

By: Paul Ellis

Paul Ellis — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:00:42 +0000

That’s why I did it with Amazon first. They sell almost anything, usually for a very good price.

By: Bob Caswell

Bob Caswell — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:20:54 +0000

As I’ve mentioned before, Amazon is where I do most of my online shopping anyway. So it’s nice to have this kind of information available.