Sort eBay Search by Bids

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Not too long ago eBay discovered that the removal of the sort by bids feature forces customers to spend much more time on their site. What an absolute nightmare.

I have thus written a free program with AutoIt called Sesbyb to fix this situation. With this program the items of your eBay “BuyItNow” search will be sorted according to their sales rank, meaning items with most bids will appear first in the list.

Supported options include:
– Number of results to sort
– Local or global search
– Min and max price

Planned are the options to enter your own search url as well processing search results of more than 200 items if there is demand for thos features. Furthermore the whole string seperation process will be overhauled.

Sesbyb - Sorting search result by bids

Sesbyb – Sorting search result by bids

Below you find a screenshot of what a search result from Sesbyb looks like:

Ebay search sorted by bids

Ebay search sorted by bids

Download Sesbyb – The Zip file includes an executable as well as the source code.

For convenience I also included the source code below. Suggestions and improvements are welcome.

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001;Sesbyb - Sort Ebay Search by Bids
002#include <Inet.au3>
003#include <String.au3>
004#include <ArraySortMulti.au3>
005 
006HotKeySet("{ESC}", "Terminate")
007 
008$file = FileOpen("sesbyb-result.html", 2)
009 
010; Check if file opened for writing OK
011If $file = -1 Then
012MsgBox(0, "Error", "Unable to open file.")
013Exit
014EndIf
015 
016$AdvancedSearchString = "http://www.ebay.co.uk/dsc/i.html?_nkw=hansuelihansueli&_sacat=See-All-Categories&_adv=1&LH_TitleDesc=1&_sadis=200&LH_BIN=1"
017$searchTerm = InputBox("What do you want to Search?", "Enter keywords", "Chilli Seeds")
018$searchTerm = StringReplace($searchTerm, " ", "+")
019$searchURL = StringReplace($AdvancedSearchString, "hansuelihansueli", $searchTerm)
020$searchAmount = InputBox("Number of Results wanted?", "From 1 to 500", "50")
021If $searchAmount >= 500 Then
022$searchAmount = 500
023ElseIf $searchAmount <= 1 Then
024$searchAmount = 1
025EndIf
026 
027$searchURL = $searchURL & '&_ipg=' & $searchAmount
028$searchLocation = InputBox("Search Locally or Globally?", "1 for Local, 2 for Global", "1")
029If $searchLocation >= 2 Then
030$searchLocation = 2
031ElseIf $searchLocation <= 1 Then
032$searchLocation = 1
033EndIf
034$searchURL = $searchURL & '&LH_PrefLoc=' & $searchLocation
035 
036$searchCountry = InputBox("Ebay Site", "Which ebay site would you like to search?", "http://www.ebay.co.uk")
037$searchURL = StringReplace($searchURL, "http://www.ebay.co.uk", $searchCountry)
038 
039$searchMinPrice = InputBox("Minimum Price?", "From 0 to 1000000", "0")
040If $searchMinPrice >= 1000000 Then
041$searchMinPrice = 1000000
042ElseIf $searchMinPrice <= 0 Then
043$searchMinPrice = 0
044EndIf
045 
046$searchMaxPrice = InputBox("Maximum Price?", "From 0 to 1000000", "1000000")
047If $searchMaxPrice >= 1000000 Then
048$searchMaxPrice = 1000000
049ElseIf $searchMaxPrice <= 0 Then
050$searchMaxPrice = 0
051EndIf
052 
053$searchURL = $searchURL & '&_mPrRngCbx=1' & '&_udlo=' & $searchMinPrice & '&_udhi=' & $searchMaxPrice
054 
055ClipPut( $searchURL)
056 
057$searchResult = _INetGetSource($searchURL)
058 
059$i = '<div id="ResultSetItems"' ; used to be <div id="ResultSet" but Ebay changed the ID
060$ResultsExtraction = StringSplit($searchResult, $i, 1) ;[1] = index etc, [2] = search results
061;_ArrayDisplay( $ResultsExtraction)
062 
063$i = '<a name="item'
064$ResultsArray = StringSplit($searchResult, $i, 1) ;
065 
066For $i = 1 To UBound($ResultsArray) - 1
067$ResultsArray[$i] = '<a name="item' & $ResultsArray[$i]
068;MsgBox( 0, "", $ResultsArray[$i])
069Next
070 
071;Get total amount of search results, currently source looks like: <span>12,316</span>
072$SearchTotalResultsArray = StringSplit($searchResult, '<span>',1)
073$NumberOfTotalResults = StringLeft($SearchTotalResultsArray[2], StringInStr($SearchTotalResultsArray[2], '</span>') -1 )
074 
075;Clean up
076$ResultsArray[1] = ""
077$ResultsArray[UBound($ResultsArray) - 1] = StringLeft($ResultsArray[UBound($ResultsArray) - 1], StringInStr($ResultsArray[UBound($ResultsArray) - 1], "/tr></table>"))
078$ResultsArray[UBound($ResultsArray) - 1] = $ResultsArray[UBound($ResultsArray) - 1] & "/tr></table>"
079_ArrayDisplay($ResultsArray)
080;Get Item URL's
081Dim $ItemLinks[UBound($ResultsArray)]
082For $i = 2 To UBound($ResultsArray) - 1
083$StringBetweenResult = _StringBetween($ResultsArray[$i], '<a href="', '" ", $ItemLinks[$i])
084;ClipPut( $ItemLinks[$i])
085Next
086 
087;Create 2D array with column for sales count
088Dim $ResultsArray2D[UBound($ResultsArray)][2]
089For $i = 0 To UBound($ResultsArray) - 1
090$ResultsArray2D[$i][0] = $ResultsArray[$i]
091$ResultsArray2D[$i][1] = 0
092Next
093 
094If $NumberOfTotalResults  <= $searchAmount Then
095ProgressOn("Sesbyb - Searching Ebay - To cancel press ESC", "Analyzing " & $searchAmount & " of the " & $NumberOfTotalResults & " results found", "0 %")
096Else
097ProgressOn("Progress - Searching Ebay - To cancel press ESC", "Analyzing " & $NumberOfTotalResults & " of the " & $NumberOfTotalResults & " results found", "0 %")
098EndIf
099 
100For $i = 2 To UBound($ResultsArray) - 1
101$ItemPage = _INetGetSource($ItemLinks[$i])
102 
103;Check if sold any
104If StringInStr($ItemPage, " sold</a>") Then
105$sl = StringLeft($ItemPage, StringInStr($ItemPage, " sold</a>") - 1)
106$sl = StringRight($sl, 10)
107$sl = StringRight($sl, StringLen($sl) - StringInStr($sl, ">"))
108$ResultsArray2D[$i][1] = $sl
109Else
110$ResultsArray2D[$i][1] = 0
111EndIf
112;MsgBox(0, "", $ResultsArray2D[$i][0])
113;MsgBox(0, "", $ResultsArray2D[$i][1])
114ProgressSet(Round($i / (UBound($ResultsArray) - 1) * 100), Round($i / (UBound($ResultsArray) - 1) * 100) & " % done")
115Next
116ProgressOff()
117 
118Local $COL0 = "COL0,ASC,STRING"
119Local $COL1 = "COL1,DESC,NUMERIC"
120_ArraySortMulti($ResultsArray2D, $COL1, $COL0)
121 
122For $i = 0 To UBound($ResultsArray) - 1
123$ResultsArray2D[$i][0] = StringReplace($ResultsArray2D[$i][0], '</tr></table>', '<td>Bids: ' & $ResultsArray2D[$i][1] & '</td></tr></table>')
124Next
125 
126;$SortedSearchResults = StringReplace($SortedSearchResults
127 
128FileWrite($file, '<html>' & @CRLF)
129FileWrite($file, '<head>' & @CRLF)
130FileWrite($file, '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="search.css" />' & @CRLF)
131FileWrite($file, '</head>' & @CRLF)
132For $i = 0 To UBound($ResultsArray) - 1
133FileWrite($file, $ResultsArray2D[$i][0] & @CRLF & @CRLF)
134Next
135FileWrite($file, '</html>' & @CRLF)
136FileClose($file)
137 
138ShellExecute("sesbyb-result.html")
139 
140Func Terminate()
141Exit 0
142EndFunc   ;==>Terminate
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7 thoughts on “Sort eBay Search by Bids”

    1. admin Post author

      Hi Sam, first of all it’s not malware but some antivirus programs classify autoit scritps as possible threats and thus quarantine them. It’s called a false positive. Having said that, I’d never recommend trying to run a program you download of the internet. The source is there so just install autoit and run the script yourself, you might also learn something in the process! Cheers

      Reply ↓
  3. admin Post author

    AutoIt is only for windows. You can either run it under a virtual pc or there are some other ways how you can run windows programs on a mac. Cheers

    Reply ↓

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