Auto ebay sync

[stopusingebay]

The two sites are completely different!!!
Ebay offer an API which does what?

The API allows manipulation of the listings for sale, leaving feedback, etc. An API is a consistent interface for using the site that is meant to be used by a computer program instead of a human. A computer program would check the available quantity of the item on both sites. If the quantity is decreased on one site, it would reduce the available quantity on the other site by sending the appropriate command through API.

[johnwash1]

If the URL of the eBay item is known, it would be fairly easy to check it every once in a while to see what the available quantity is. But such a program would probably best be independent of eBid, since eBay wouldn't like to have thousands of page accesses every hour from eBid.

Someone could make a utility that you run on your computer that checks your email for "your item sold" emails, and then checks the quantity on eBay. It would then have to interface eBid to change the quantity. As far as I know eBid doesn't have an API to allow utilities to edit listings, it would have access both sites through the browser interface. Without an API, each time eBay or eBid changes its user interface, the utility would have to be modified to work with it again.

edit: I was wrong. eBid has added an API somewhat recently. It's here: https://ebid.3scale.net/ EBay has an API, but I'm not completely sure how available it is to something like this, as at least a developer account and/or an AppID is needed. They could potentially turn off access to service like this if it encourages competition.

Somewhat recently? You call 4 years somewhat recently?

Doing it with a desktop hosted utility checking your email is a non-starter. Just consider how many different mailers there are out there and you'll see why.

Perfectly feasible for a web site to do it, using the ebay and ebid APIs. But the question is whether anyone capable of doing it would put it on their 'to do' list and then whether it would get to the top of that list. Why would someone do that, what would be their incentive?

[stopusingebay]

Yes, I call 4 years somewhat recently for a site that has existed for so long without it.

It's no wonder that cloud based services are so popular for those creating them, and online industries in general. You get access to everyone's user name and password for both eBay and eBid, or at least permission to modify their seller accounts through an API. You can charge any amount of money for the service and change your price at any time. And finally, eBay can revoke your API key and shut down the service any time that they want, if frequently accessing a large number of accounts from the same IP addresses over and over again didn't cause some kind of trouble to begin with.

[tony41]

You now seem to be giving reasons why it is not a good idea.