Looking for help with an app idea.

[xavierkiath]

I'm thinking of something similar to Tektek as a web based tool for Gaians, but the objective would be an up-to-date Gaia Cash to Gold ratio instead of avatar design.

I am a noob to things like this. How hard would it be to set up something that daily/hourly/whatever, reads the current marketplace averages on the items in the GC shops and gives you the ratio and maybe worst/best performers? Also, does Gaia have any restrictions on programs reading the website? I know they don't want goldbots, so I want to make sure this idea doesn't somehow violate ToS.

Thank you to anyone with knowledge/advice.

[cranium coccyx]

You should also probably ask yourself if you'd be allowed to actually do that; or actually ask an admin.

[xavierkiath]

Quote:

You should also probably ask yourself if you'd be allowed to actually do that; or actually ask an admin.

From the original post:

Quote:

does Gaia have any restrictions on programs reading the website? I know they don't want goldbots, so I want to make sure this idea doesn't somehow violate ToS.

stare I admit I might be assuming a lot to think admins might actually read what's in their forum, but I know zero programming so they can rest easy knowing I can't do anything with this idea until I get some feedback from the more experienced folks here. I would obviously drop the idea if an admin said it's not ok.

[MyNameIsKir]

iron.io would be an excellent resource for you. It offers an amazing task scheduler. You could easily write a quick website scraper and set up an iron.io worker to run it at whatever your desired interval is. I've used it before alongside Twilio to create a simple app to text hourly reminders, and found it painfully easy to do, especially in Ruby.

Also, I assure you that pulling market information is perfectly fine, as it is not stated otherwise in the rules or ToS, and Tektek themselves pull various data off of Gaia as well.

Something you may consider doing is making a Chrome and/or Firefox extension to add functionality to Tektek's item database. That way you only need to write that one feature, and you won't have to design your own website (because we all know that real programmers can't do UI/UX, better yet art). Also, if it gains enough popularity, whoever runs Tektek may contact you and work with you to integrate your code.

[xavierkiath]

Thanks for the recommendation. I signed up for iron.io and am looking around on their site. Can you recommend a place to learn what to do with iron.io? I'm starting this project as a complete layman, so I can see that iron is something I'll need but it feels like being handed a gear assembly without knowing what a bicycle is.

[Conditionals]

According to the ToS:

Quote:

You agree that you will not use any robot, spider, scraper, or other automated means to access Gaia Online for any purpose without our express written permission or bypass our robot exclusion headers or other measures we may use to prevent or restrict access to Gaia Online.

With that said, TekTek itself is almost certainly in violation. Unless you're doing this for profit they're never going to catch on if all you're doing is pulling information at reasonable intervals, proceed at your own risk.

I'd recommend learning a little Python. It's reasonably easy to pick up, spend a day learning it and you should be proficient enough to do something like this.

Feel free to message me if you need a lesson

[xavierkiath]

Thanks, I'll look up python and make sure to actually speak with an admin type before I start anything running.