Topic: JBidwatcher Help / Get My eBay Items stopped working

Latest alpha seems to be sniping fine.
For testing purposes I just sniped a book for EUR 1,50 plus 1 EUR shipping costs ;)

Topic: JBidwatcher Help / "Cannot compare different currencies..."

I’m bidding in EUR and got that message several times. Some snipes were the highest bids and won.
Restarting jbw often helped. Looks like there is some confusion with eBay changing its GUI.

Topic: JBidwatcher Tips and Tricks / Feature Request: Add JBidwatcher to start menu.

Put jbidwatcher into your Windows auto start folder and it starts up when you boot into your Windows.

Topic: JBidwatcher Help / "Cannot compare different currencies..."

Recently I’m getting some error messages that there is currency trouble:

Tue Jun 09 20:02:40 CEST 2009: Tue Jun 09 20:02:40 CEST 2009: 280353445273 (Armspange/Armband – ?gyptische Handarbeit – 750er Gold) – Cancelling snipe.
Tue Jun 09 20:04:01 CEST 2009: eBay says my max bid is a different type of currency than I have stored!
Cannot compare different currencies.
at com.jbidwatcher.util.Currency.less(Currency.java:610)
at com.jbidwatcher.auction.server.ebay.ebayAuction.setMaxBidFromServer(ebayAuction.java:642)
at com.jbidwatcher.auction.server.ebay.ebayAuction.parseAuction(ebayAuction.java:425)
at com.jbidwatcher.auction.server.AuctionServer.doParse(AuctionServer.java:264)
at com.jbidwatcher.auction.server.AuctionServer.loadAuction(AuctionServer.java:212)
at com.jbidwatcher.auction.server.AuctionServer.reload(AuctionServer.java:182)
at com.jbidwatcher.auction.AuctionEntry.update(AuctionEntry.java:1135)
at com.jbidwatcher.auction.Auctions.doUpdate(Auctions.java:158)
at com.jbidwatcher.auction.Auctions.doNextUpdate(Auctions.java:188)
at com.jbidwatcher.auction.Auctions.check(Auctions.java:210)
at com.jbidwatcher.ui.ListManager.checkEachList(ListManager.java:152)
at com.jbidwatcher.ui.AuctionsManager.check(AuctionsManager.java:93)
at com.jbidwatcher.util.queue.TimerHandler.run(TimerHandler.java:56)
[now I’m shutting down jbw]
Tue Jun 09 22:34:36 CEST 2009: Shutting down JBidwatcher.
Press any key to continue…

Topic: JBidwatcher Help / "Recovering listings" problem

I’m adding all new auctions through the webserver interface.
When there are lots of completed auctions I’m deleting these auctions.
After deleting these auctions seem gone.

But after shutting down JBW and restarting, the console in which JBW is started shows a message “Recovering 1621 listings”.

After start, JBW shows a new tab “Recovered” auctions which I cannot delete permanently. They always come back after a restart.
Also when I now check the webserver, there are many dublicate completed auctions. Some of those dublicate auctions show up ten or even twenty times.

Since I cannot remove those “recovered” auctions and those dublicate entries in the web interface, I have to wipe out the .jbidwatcher dir and start from a fresh install.

It seems that the JBW database has become corrupted through my initial deletion of those completed auction entries. Also those lots of dublicate auctions in the web interface are starting to shine up after the 1st JBW restart after deleting those completed auctions.

Could it be that entering auctions through the web interface is part of the problem?

PS: My script is checking carefully that auctions are first added to the interface before a snipe is set up for that auction number. It also doesn’t add auctions which show the “Auction Ended” tag in the web interface…

Here is the console output starting at the last session where I’m deleting those completed auctons:

hzo@goldfish:~/Desktop/jbidwatcher.my$ ./jbidwatcher
Fri May 22 09:48:59 CEST 2009: JBidwatcher 2.0.1-825
Fri May 22 09:48:59 CEST 2009: Sun Microsystems Inc. Java, version 1.6.0_10 on Linux
Fri May 22 09:48:59 CEST 2009: Error setting up scripting: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/jruby/runtime/builtin/IRubyObject
Fri May 22 09:49:00 CEST 2009: Loading listings from the database (155/377/377 entries, 377/1998 auctions)
Fri May 22 09:49:00 CEST 2009: Done with the initial load (got 155 active entries)
-————————————————————————————————————
at this time I have deleted those completed auctions
-————————————————————————————————————
Fri May 22 09:50:26 CEST 2009: Shutting down JBidwatcher.
Press any key to continue…
hzo@goldfish:~/Desktop/jbidwatcher.my$ ./jbidwatcher
Fri May 22 09:50:30 CEST 2009: JBidwatcher 2.0.1-825
Fri May 22 09:50:30 CEST 2009: Sun Microsystems Inc. Java, version 1.6.0_10 on Linux
Fri May 22 09:50:31 CEST 2009: Error setting up scripting: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/jruby/runtime/builtin/IRubyObject
Fri May 22 09:50:32 CEST 2009: Loading listings from the database (155/155/155 entries, 296/1776 auctions)
Fri May 22 09:50:32 CEST 2009: Done with the initial load (got 155 active entries)
Fri May 22 09:50:35 CEST 2009: Recovering 1621 listings.

Topic: That's SO beta! / beta 2.0b7 repeated items

I’m getting dublicated items from the jbw server through
the web interface (LOTS of them, sometimes a thousand
entries) by doing the following:

1) I add auctions to jbw through the web interface.

2) I remove “Auction Ended” auctions using the “delete auction”
popup tab of the native jbw interface.

3) I shut down jbw

4) After restart I’m getting some message that
auctions with lost data were restored.

5) A new tab shines up with restored auctions which had ended.

5a) Deleting this tab doesn’t help. It will shine up after each restart.

6) From this time on the web interface delivers some auctions
which had ended before multiple times (sometimes 20x the same auction)

7) Only solution I found was to nuke the complete
$HOME/.jbidwatcher direktory and to start over.
Since I’m adding auctions to jbw through a script which reads
an ascii file and adds those auctions through the web interface,
I don’t lose any scheduled auctions.

While I didn’t look into the source code,
my belly is talking to me that this might be
a bug in the database handling of deleted snipes.
(Or does it have something to do with adding
MANY (>100) auctions through the web interface?)

Enjoy!
-bidfish

Topic: JBidwatcher Development / Losing snipes changing into "--"

Sometimes snipes which are already below the current bid change from their snipe amount into “—”. This makes it difficult for the user to track the bid history after the auction is over.

I only can imagine this behavior from a coding point of view to stop jbw releasing the already losing snipe at the end of auction. In my opinion a more clean way would be to copy the snipe input value into another “working” snipe variable which is changed/reset to “—” during program execution.

Changing a visible input value without user interaction delivers some kind of uncertainty to the user and especially makes it hard to inspect end of auction state.

Enjoy!
-bidfish

Topic: JBidwatcher Help / Communications failure talking to the server

I have seen that problem since yesterday:

After starting Jbw, it updates my auctions.
Then shortly after my login name is stricken through.

activity log:
Sat Apr 18 09:26:29 CEST 2009: Updating Kette Collier 750 Gold Gelbgold
Sat Apr 18 09:26:30 CEST 2009: Done updating Kette Collier 750 Gold Gelbgold
Sat Apr 18 09:26:39 CEST 2009: Link issues:
Sat Apr 18 09:26:39 CEST 2009: Communications failure talking to the server
Sat Apr 18 09:26:39 CEST 2009: Link issues:
Sat Apr 18 09:26:39 CEST 2009: Communications failure talking to the server

Any help?

Topic: JBidwatcher Help / Where to find information about scripting Jbw?

Thank you Morgan for that instructive guidance about scripting in Jbw.
Shouldn’t your posting about scripting go into the Jbw FAQ?
So your effort to explain scripting to me would be multiplied.

PS: Your suggestion for using Jbw’s web interface for
manipulating snipes was an eye opener for me.
It’s so cool adding and modifying snipes from the outside.

Adding or modifying hundreds(!) of snipes in a few seconds
cannot be topped. While adding takes some more time, changing
of one hundred snipe values finishes in less than 2 seconds!! WOW!!!

And now my next adventure with Jbw will be to use scripting ;)
Jbw really is a jewel of a sniper! Each day I’m playing/working
with Jbw , it tells me more that you have put your heart blood into it.
This is something you’ll hardly ever find outside the open source
world.

Thank you for that!

All the best wishes for you and your family.
-Hans

Topic: JBidwatcher Help / Where to find information about scripting Jbw?

Since Jbw is getting my favourite tool,
I would love to learn more about that cool
jruby scripting option.

Despite searching the jbidwatcher forums,
I didn’t really find some answers to my
questions:

As I understand it, I need a modified version
of jbw to use scripting. Where do I get that
version?

Some error messages at the start of jbw suggest
that there is a problem getting jruby to run
at start up. How can I solve that problem?

What can I do with scripting? Do I have
full options to read/write from/to files?
Can I recalculate snipes depending on
who is the high bidder? Can I modify snipe
delays depending on network load?

Thank you for answering these questions
which might look silly for a streamlined hacker.

Don’t be too harsh since I’m an old dog
which once started its computing life with
ALGOL60. (What’s THAAAT??? ;)

But also old dogs want to learn new tricks
when the food tastes great…

Enjoy!
-bidfish

Topic: JBidwatcher Help / How to resize 'information...' window'

Sorry if that question is an easy one.
I searched the Jbw forums but didn’t find an
answer. I also grepped Jbidwatcher’s config
files and didn’t find a parameter which
looked like a windows resizer.

When I click ‘show information’ a window pops up.
Window title is ‘Information…’ I want this
window to be bigger. Is there a parameter option
which can permanently resize that window?

Enjoy!
-bidfish

PS: I think I’m getting Jbw addicted. Yesterday I was
running Jbidwatcher with more than 100 active snipes;

WOW! ;)

And it worked (most of the time) like a charm.
Thank you Morgan for this great tool!

Topic: JBidwatcher Development / Feature request: snipe amount from external program (USD 200,- reward)

Web server & local html view runs great!.
As it looks listings are shown in no special order.
Is there an option to sort listings for remaining time or article number?

BTW: how to enable jruby? When starting jbidwatcher,
I get an error message that

“Error setting up scripting: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/jruby/runtime/builtin/IRubyObject”

BTW: I have install jruby-0.9 and jruby-1.0.

Enjoy!
-bidfish

Topic: JBidwatcher Development / Feature request: snipe amount from external program (USD 200,- reward)

Sounds great.
As I understand it I first have to
add that auction by GETting: http://localhost:9099/addAuction?id=190280918097

and then

setting the snipe amount http://localhost:9099/activateSnipe?id=190280918097&snipeamount=3.98

As soon as I have some free time at my hands I’ll set up another account for testing. If this works for me, there’ll be some sniper’s bounty on its way. ;) No kiddin….

Thank you CyberFOX for this great tool!

Topic: JBidwatcher Development / Feature request: snipe amount from external program (USD 200,- reward)

I would love to get the snipe amount calculated from an external program (like a perl script).

Proposal:
To let jbidwatcher call the external program ‘ext’ is entered as snipe amount.
At the time set up for sniping, jbidwatcher calls that external program giving it the ebay article number as parameter.

Now the external program calculates the snipe amount and exits, giving the snipe amount back to jbidwatcher.

I’m offering USD 200,- for the implementation of this feature.