Craigslist Watcher Program

Posted by Mike Dwyer | Filed under

As of right now, this is just a teaser, but by the time anyone reads this, hopefully I will have the source code up. 

My new project is a craigslist watcher program.  The background is, anytime I want to search on craigslist for something (cheap), I have to refresh the page all day long.  Of course thousands of others could be waiting for the same item, so what happens most of the time is I find the item too late and lose the item.  I have found other watcher programs , but they did not do what I want (I am sure there are some that cost money).  The sample programs I found could either only search for one item, or only searched new items.  I wanted a program where I could put in a bunch of different search terms, and have the program first load what is currently there, then monitor the feed.  I also wanted to be able to remove items that I know I don't want, but not have them show back up in the list.

 I found some source code that was close to what I want.  It had a bunch of failures, such as only searching one item, using its own search algorythm instead of Craigslist, etc. In the end, I ended up modifying most of the code, and then adding all the functionality I wanted. I have to say, I am pretty impressed with myself on this one.  The program is running great thus far.  I have to do a little cleanup before I post the source, but should have that done in the next few days.  Currently it is in C# connecting to an Access DB.  I am going to convert Access to SQLite to make it a little more portable, especially to convert the app to run on Android. 

 To do: 
Run as a service
Text message
Notification on tabs
Convert to Android
Convert DB to SQLite
Email

 

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