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Scrape & compare sites based on user input?

Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2010 12:20 am
by Vexx
Hi all,
The problem: A shopping website my parents frequent has both a .co.uk and .com version. Prices differ not just between the two sites, but also depending on the location of the accessing ip. This is important as the shipping charges are 'hidden', in that they are calculated based on ip and added to the price - so the user thinks the shipping is free. What I would like to do is to write a simple site that displays the 4 different prices available from the sites: .co.uk (native); .co.uk (foreign); .com (native); .com (foreign), based on user input. In addition, each site has multiple 'versions' of the same product, so it would be nice to scrape the images and display next to price.

First of all, is what I'm after possible with php? If so, roughly how difficult for a complete php novice to achieve?

My current plan of attack is:
1. Scraping price off one site (.com or .co.uk) with regular server ip
2. + Image
3. + price/image from other site
4. + scraping through 'native' ip
5. + multiple versions price/image