Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

Greetings,
Yes, sorry, I skimmed them, and didn’t notice the request to remove your email.

I’ll do that. I’ve been heavily occupied with trying to find a new job, so I haven’t been doing much JBidwatcher development lately. Let’s see if I can roughly respond to your questions…

1. I’ll poke at the completed auction handling for My eBay searches; it’s possible that it’s marking them as sticky (i.e. on completion they don’t move from the current tab), but it shouldn’t be.
2. One interesting report I got recently pointed out that I’m checking time drift between before I start the network request, and the time that eBay shows when the request comes back. They made the point that this could be skewed by abnormally long startup times for the network request, and that it might be more accurate to check time drift by grabbing a time snapshot after the request for the time page has returned. I’ll poke at that. I’ve always resisted the ‘synch 5 minutes before snipe’, because if your clock is drifting 1-2 minutes every 40 minutes, JBidwatcher isn’t going to be able to adjust for that sanely. It means that in the 5 minutes left from the sync, your clock will drift by (on average) about 11 seconds. That’s a broken computer, in my opinion, and so I don’t believe that’s the problem for most folks, and thus the ‘sync’ solution may seem right, but it’s not actually addressing the underlying problem.

I thought I’d fixed the delete problem in 2.1pre8, actually.

JBidwatcher is actually a heavily multi-threaded program, and the number of threading issues (left) in it are surprisingly few. I’m actually kinda proud of that. :) The older version was a nightmare to manage, mainly. It didn’t support large auction sets, it was terribly factored, it was really, really frustrating to code on. I added the database, and several other features, to bring it up to a level that I was comfortable developing at, but the interface between the old all-in-memory code and the new as-much-as-possible-in-database code is still admittedly shaky. The deletion issue is resolved, though, I’m pretty sure of that.

I’d need to see your logs for the steps you took, to see exactly what’s caused JBidwatcher to believe the login failed, but that message is VERY specific. If you’re seeing: “eBay (or the link to eBay) appears to be down for the moment.”, it means that eBay responded to an item-view attempt with the very specific message: “Our Site is Temporarily Unavailable”.

The login status display in the upper right has three distinct components. The time, the username, and the icon which indicates login status.

If the login status is green, it’s logged you in. You don’t need to worry about it at that point. If the username and time are struck out, it means it’s having trouble talking to eBay. (God I suck at user-facing UI paradigms; JBidwatcher’s UI needs a serious overhaul.) The strikeout there meant that it tried to read an auction, and got the ‘temporarily unavailable’ message. It doesn’t mean you’re not logged in, just that it thinks eBay might be down. (Not being logged in is usually is shown by a red login status icon, and ‘Not logged in…’ in the username space.)

Updating your login cookie changes the hover text, because it’s a successful network operation, but only a successful listing retrieval can clear the strikeout.

I hope this makes some sense. It all made sense to me as I built it, but when it’s all together it’s…obviously not sufficient.

— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

Greetings,
@gl – Thanks for the detailed report! I’m sure something’s flaky there, and I agree JBidwatcher needs a good bug pass. I’m trying to reduce the ticket count in Lighthouse to something reasonable, so I can actually use it as a bug tracker. Currently it’s kind of acting as an auxiliary forum. :( The big problem is that I don’t know all the actual current bugs. A lot of bug reports are, ‘It doesn’t work!‘, essentially, without item numbers, descriptions, logs, or even what platform or JBidwatcher version. Then there are bug reports (sometimes really detailed!) that are still MPTNMI’s (stolen from the Passenger project, that stands for Mysterious Problems Than Need Massive Investigations) which I don’t always have the resources to do.

Often it takes someone dedicated who’s having the problem, working in a tight loop with me, sending them test versions which expose different debugging parts of the system, getting their logs, tweaking my version, and sending it back to them.

For example, your issue of getting your ebay username ‘crossed out’, is usually a communications failure talking to eBay. (Hovering over the strikeout will tell you what happened.) The log file will also often identify the issue; sometimes it’s because eBay’s just being stupid.

Sometimes it’s JBidwatcher being stupid. :)

One of my biggest concerns right now is that JBidwatcher is ‘partially database backed’, which means that it caches a lot of the items in memory, and I’m worried about parts of the program that might get out of sync with each other because they use the cache, or use the database and bypass the cache. I’m unsure about going to ‘everything that talks to an AuctionEntry uses the database’, because that’s probably not performant, so I’ve been trying to get everything to use the cache (which does the lookup on cache-misses) for read, and write-through when necessary.

For the two issues you raise:

1. JBidwatcher will download completed listings from your My eBay; it’s part of the information in My eBay, so it considers it important. They should move to the ‘completed’ tab, though. At the very least, if you select them, right-click, and choose ‘Update’, it should move them then.
2. For time sync, JBidwatcher synchronizes the time every (roughly) 40 minutes; I can’t imagine that it’s getting out of sync in that amount of time…? JBidwatcher starts the snipe 2 minutes early, but doesn’t submit the confirmation form until the snipe time. If the bid is under at the two minute mark, JBidwatcher will report it at that time, and cancel the snipe (because it can’t win, or even be submitted to eBay). Could that be what you’re seeing?

— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

Morgan – using OS X 10.6.3 and pre-prerelease8! As of now all is right in the world of jbidwatcher! Thanks. Cavet to all- I’m only listening on ebay, have not sniped yet

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

Installed the pre8 pre-release and the first thing I noticed is that once it auto-logged in it said, “Done getting the sign in cookie for ebay.co.uk,” even though the Configure shows just ebay.com, which is what I use.

I did “get my eBay items” and got all of them!! I then deleted them using both the trash icon and right-click delete and both worked.

Dragging from browser window to JBW nothing appears until after I switch tabs, i.e. go to “complete” tab and then back to “current” tab. Then they are there.

Using the menu, “add auction” I get the same thing, but the status messages shows, “Added [auction name and stuff].” Again switching windows and there it is! “Paste auction” behaves the same ….. but see issues below

Ahhh! And now the delete problem resurfaces. The thumbnail is gone but the auction lingers until closing JBW and relaunching it …. And now the dragging auction from browser is dead ….. until I quit and relaunch …….. pasting now reports an error that auction already exists when I have none showing ….. dragging produces nothing, no error and no auction added. But, after quitting and restarting every shows up, but minus their thumbnails until after auction is updated.

No snipes for now will advise when I get them. Thanks!!

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

Hi Morgan,

Thanks for the patched version. All good now for me on OS X 10.6.3 – searches and getting my ebay watch list is working.

Cheers Tim

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

Hi Morgan, Just tried the 2.1.pre8 Windows Standalone version and it’s still not finding the Watched Items (0 watched items found).

UPDATE I deleted my .jbidwatcher folder and tried again – it now finds all my Watched items but does NOT find the items I am bidding on or the items I have already won!

Regards
Hoddy

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

Greetings,
I messed this one up. I fubared all forms of search, unfortunately, while trying to resolve an infinite loop that could happen if your search returned a result set that exactly equalled the page size. :(

I’d like you to try out a pre-prerelease, and let me know if it resolves your issues. (It may warn about a ‘newer version’, 2.1pre7. Ignore it.)

Standalone Windows: http://www.jbidwatcher.com/download/JBidwatcher…
Disk Image (Mac OS X): http://www.jbidwatcher.com/download/JBidwatcher…
Linux .jar: http://www.jbidwatcher.com/download/JBidwatcher…

As per usual, please let me know in as much detail as you can, about any issues you run into! This isn’t necessarily an official 2.1pre8 release, but I’m hoping to make it official real soon, unless there are widespread showstoppers in it.

Here’s the unofficial changelog:

JBidwatcher 2.1pre8

• The last release was a bit hurried to fix sniping issues, so this is the ‘fix what broke due to rushing it out’ release.

• Bugs fixed
  • Searches (including Get My eBay Items) work again
  • Fixed a failure to start the internal web server if you shut it down and tried to restart it
  • Auctions with Buy It Now and Fixed Price listings are once again distinct
  • For many users JBidwatcher was failing to save configuration settings during shutdown
  • Make displayed bid values more consistent, and try to reduce the number of ‘null’ prices that are displayed.
  • When deleting rows, sometimes they would be replaced with ‘*’ and would cause all kinds of problems until you shut down and restarted JBidwatcher. This should be resolved.

— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

Same problem here – I rest everything and still no luck. OS X 10.6.3 and same log file as Plex. The workaround adding items manually does work for me too.

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

I didn’t want to start a new thread, but on MacOS 10.6.3 with the new pre-release (2.1pre7-29-g519c99a) I’m not having the same issues as reported by other Mac users. Snipes fire, the Seller name is now correct, I get logged in.

I too can NOT “get my eBay items.” JBW reports “Found 0 watched items.” The log reports as follows:

Sat Jun 05 09:16:50 PDT 2010: Loading page 1 of My eBay for user ***********
Sat Jun 05 09:16:50 PDT 2010: URL: http://my.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MyEbayBeta&…
Sat Jun 05 09:16:53 PDT 2010: Bad input tag (ignoring): button id=“EditButton_4698” class=“sfbtn” onclick=“return vjo.dsf.EventDispatcher.run(this,event,‘click’)”
Sat Jun 05 09:16:55 PDT 2010: Bad input tag (ignoring): button id=“EditButton_9552” class=“sfbtn” onclick=“return vjo.dsf.EventDispatcher.run(this,event,‘click’)”
Sat Jun 05 09:16:55 PDT 2010: Loading page: http://my.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MyEbayBeta&…
Sat Jun 05 09:16:55 PDT 2010: No items on page!

What errors/bugs I am seeing are that completed auctions do not move from “current” tab to the “complete” tab. Also, to delete a completed snipe/auction, I have to select the auction, then delete but all that happens is the Thumbnail is deleted. To remove the listing I must shutdown JBW and restart.

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

Here’s a workaround that I used last night successfully:

- add the auctions you want to snipe/bid on manually
- right click “update auction” manually to make jbw set the correct “time left”
- now it’s possible to set a snipe, and it actually fires (tried with two auctions which i actually also won)

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

Same problem here. :-(
-Scott

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

If one pastes the auction into the window, it updates
with time left. SNIPE is grayed out. Test login works.

Dead in the water.

Bill Hale

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

Also have failure to get watched items.

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

same problem here, jbw lastest 2.1pre7, os x 10.6.3

also if i add auctions manually they show time left not like usually but with the full date and time as if the auction was already finished.

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

I’m having the same problem. Can’t download watched items.
Windows 7. pre7. I can pass the log in test. ebay.com us.

I tried reloading 2.0.1-825 which has worked in the past
but no soap with it either.

:-( This has been a good application. Consistently downloading
the watched items has been the only hassle as it is today.

ebay 69wookie

Bill Hale
Donor.

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

Apparently non of my searches work anymore since I updated yesterday, not only my watched items. Using pre7 on Ubuntu 10.04

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

I am also having this problem on ebay.co.uk (Mac OS 10.6.3). Is it possible to download a copy of the previous version as I didn’t keep it.

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

Having the same problem. I’m using Mac OSX and ebay.com.

Topic: 2.1pre7 not retrieving watched items.

I’ll confirm this behavior. on winXP 2005 MC, I tried both the .jar and .exe and both fail to get watched items. I filed a bug report already (#1157) on this and another issue I detected.

da BugMagnet
supporter and donor

Topic: [PreRelease] JBidwatcher 2.1pre4 is out

Morgan,
Another thing I would like to see is a separate tab for those items which have completed their auction cycle without having been sold. In other words, we would have two separate categories for completed auctions. The ones which have been sold would no longer require any attention. Since they are no longer available, they would only provide an indication of what similar items like them might sell for. However if you were tracking either auctions or “Buy it Now” items, you could still keep your attention on those items without being distracted by other items which have already sold. For me anyway, that would be nice. Since I often track items which don’t ultimately sell.

The tabs would look like this:
Current | Still Available | Sold Items | Selling

Come to think of it, “Selling” could be divided in the same way. As those who sell need to quickly identify which items have sold from those which have not at the end of their auction cycle.
That would give us something like:
Current | Still Available | Others Sold | My Auctions | Mine Available | Mine Sold

Thank you,
Xavian-Anderson Macpherson
ShingoshiDao

Topic: [PreRelease] JBidwatcher 2.1pre4 is out

Sorry I was not clear Morgan. The tweeks I meant were really the little clean ups that you do: the feedback percent and number issues, but you’ve fixed in the latest pre5 version.

Topic: [PreRelease] JBidwatcher 2.1pre4 is out

Morgan,
I think there needs to be a way to independently set the width of the columns. The current behavior is tedious to work with. Any time you move the dimensions of one column, the others are affected. If there were a minimum width alloted to each column according to the size of the label above them, that would do much to eliminate this problem.

However, I would much prefer right-clicking on any columns tab to set and lock the width (maybe from a menu) at a certain size. That would always give you exactly what you without any other column changing the setting.

Xavian-Anderson Macpherson
ShingoshiDao

Topic: [PreRelease] JBidwatcher 2.1pre4 is out

Thanks for the reply. I tried to (get info) to set 32 or 64 bits, but no clue on how to do that from OS X end. So…. I downloaded the Pre5 again, and it runs now without that issue. I can run it now on both from home when I am home, at at the office when I go to work. I don’t know why the previous download did not work, perhaps a corrupted download, but somehow the image mounted and I copied to Applications folder.. but now it works, so I am happy.

Now… watch out, I am going to snipe something on eBay …. to fill my 2010 shopping cart… :)

Thanks Morgan, I’d just sent in my contribution for all your hard work to start off 2010 for you… guys, let’s send it to Morgan. Thanks.

Topic: [PreRelease] JBidwatcher 2.1pre4 is out

Greetings,
@zappram – I’m going to guess that you’re running in 64 bit mode on the iMac? If so, try setting 2.1pre5 to be 32 bit mode (Get Info on the .app) and see if that works. I’m adding a PList setting to direct it to use 32 bit mode for future versions until I can rebuild some of the native libraries to work successfully in 64 bit mode as well.

— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

Topic: [PreRelease] JBidwatcher 2.1pre4 is out

Greetings,
Thanks @mhackney; I’ve been away for a little bit. I’d love to know what tweaks you’d like to see in JBidwatcher 2.1 from 2.1pre5!

Actually, that goes for everybody; I wish I’d put a message in, asking for feedback on 2.1pre5.

As for enhanced.jbidwatcher.com I’m working on switching that over to be the ‘main site’ shortly. Among other things it allows me to manage the site from the web, instead of having to log on to my shell account and manually edit the HTML each time I’m making a release, which is one of the BIG pieces of friction when making new releases.

Step by step, I’m trying to automate or make easy as many of the pieces of making a release as possible. A long time ago I made build-for-all-platforms-and-upload a one-line affair. Now it’s time to make ‘update the site content’ really easy…

I’ve also bought an SSL certificate for jbidwatcher.com allowing users of JBidwatcher running on OS X 10.5 or above to use the very common Sparkle auto-update framework.

— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!