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eAuction 1.6.1.x >> Discussion of Functions >> Auction open and close times
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Message started by thisolddoll on 11/19/03 at 02:44:26

Title: Auction open and close times
Post by thisolddoll on 11/19/03 at 02:44:26

When the auction was found to lose six hours between priview and the active display, you changed it on the working version on my site. Did you also make these changes in the download version of eAuction161.pl and eConfig161.pl? The new version I have now (the one you fixed and linked to in the email) it's now gaining 24 hours.

Title: Re: Auction open and close times
Post by Forum Admin on 11/19/03 at 09:58:20

Please, download the zip file
eAuction161.zip
it is located in the 'Download' board of this forum

Title: Re: Auction open and close times
Post by thisolddoll on 11/20/03 at 05:18:33

Here's a new installation of the program eAuction161.pl

http://www.todauction.com/cgi-bin/dieter/dieter.pl

When I list an item for ten minutes, it closes in one day and ten minutes.

When I bring up the categories, it shows there are two listings but when I choose the category, it says nothing was found.

When I search for an item, it doesn't find anything.

This is a new installation - only the names have been changed. Didn't even take out the advertisements or change the categories.

Anyone have any ideas?

Title: Re: Auction open and close times
Post by Forum Admin on 11/20/03 at 09:29:22

Yes, I have an idea ;-)

either you should download the file: eAuction161.zip
or you should exchange your sub get_the_time as mentioned before.

Title: Upload vs url images
Post by thisolddoll on 11/22/03 at 11:39:19

Hello, Dieter (and anyone else reading this),

Thank you for the copyfile procedure. It's working beautifully. Now when an auction closes, the file will go into an acrhive to be accessed by a copy of the program that won't check for ending time. That's the plan, anyway, and now, thanks to you, it will have the data still in archive versions of the original categories.

Today, I changed some of the columns on the category display page. Now it includes item number and seller and I dropped the category because it's redundent. If you're looking at a category, you wouldn't need to see that category on each line of the listing.

I especially like that this same listing is used for all searches and that displaying a category is really just another search. That's probably why you have the category column, but I think the item number and the seller are more important to my type of auction than is the category.

On 151 I had thumbnails on both the category listing and the page where the new item was listed. The latter was from a complaint that when the image names get changed, it's confusing to remember what photos are up and which still need to be loaded. So the thumbnail next to the url box let her see what she had up.

I haven't been able to isolate the images in 161, though. I see that the program reads the file and one variable is the $image. It's actually a string of file names delimited by a space. So it gets split to for the array. Logicall, $image[0] should be the first photo that when displayed with a height of 50 would make a nice thumbnail instead of the camera image. Since at least one photo will be required, there should always be something in $image. If the line is blank, though, the camera url could be put into the file.

The problem is the two ways of representing the image data. If someone has the image in his own web space, the whole path gets put into the image array. But if he uploads, only the names go in. This means the program has to parse each element of the image array to see if it begins with "http://" or not. Wouldn't it be easier if all images were treated the same? What difference does it make if the iimage is on the same server or some other? If the full url was there for each photo -no matter where it's stored, then the syntax would be much easier and there would be at least one process the program wouldn't have to run.

Another thing I've been trying to show on the category/search result list is the time remaining. The two dates and times aren't as friendly as "4 days, 5hrs and 16 min" All a person wants to know is "how much time do I have and what time does it end?" So he looks at the second date, then brings up the current date on his computer, mentally subtracts the end date from today to get the days, then subtracts 12 from the time to get the time of day. Not very convenient when opening the auction figures it out for him. But if he has to stop and open each auction, it really slows down the brouse process.

So I see the subroutine to get time remaining but from the listing page, I can't seem to get the parameters it requires.

Neither the thumbnails or the time remaining is essential to the auction and I'll happily give up these features for your relist and modification options. On 151 I was having to do that manually.

Oh - one "bug?" When you list a new item and make an error and have to go back, the first time you do this, it blanks the screen - the description and the images are gone. Could this be the temp feature so that items that aren't confirmed in ten minutes are deleted? Is there a way to extend this time - like by about an hour or two? I know many people take a lot of time describing their item, checking thsie spelling, spacing, html links, and the like. To spend two hors putting up a listing isn't unusual - and then to mistype your password and go back to find it all gone is enough to send them screaming to ebay. (after I get a particularly nasty email, of course.)

And when you search for a keyword or a user name, it's case sensitive. Even I was able to fix this with lc and know it's just an oversite but thought it worth mentioning.

Thanks!
Michele

Title: Re: Auction open and close times
Post by Forum Admin on 11/22/03 at 17:13:31

Hi Michele,

you haven't 'real thumbnails' because the script doesn't use ImageMagic; that's because 'ImageMagic' isn't installed on every server and therefore it was my intention, to provide the use of 'size reduced' images for everybody.
You can display an image by typing
my $disp_img = qq|<img src="$config{'img_url'}/$image[0]"@{[img_size($image[0], 100)]}>|;
where '100' is the x-size of the image
or
my $disp_img = qq|<img src="$config{'img_url'}/$image[0]"@{[img_size($image[0], 80)]}>|;
where '80' is the x-size of the image
and so on ...

A linked image (http:// ...) can't be handled by the script because the image-source is outsite.
I could store it to the upload folder(see the demo of: myAuction); but in this case I need to use the module LWP (this module is not a part of the common perl installation).

Time_Remain is OK with me ...
it is independent of the local time; the bidder has only to observe his clock. ;)

What you are calling a 'bug' ... :'(
if the user has to go back because of an error,
everything is still there, excepted the password and the list of upload-images.

I could change this; but then I have to use 'JavaScript' and most users disable 'JavaScript' because it is a risk of security.

Title: Re: Auction open and close times
Post by thisolddoll on 11/22/03 at 21:49:19

About referencing images, must be missing something. The program can call a browser to interptet the string,

"http://www.somesite.com/pic.jpg"

in the item file

but not

"http://www.thissite.com/eAuction/img_upload/pic.jpg"

in the same way without using image magic?

As for losing the listing screen on the return from preview, it's only the first time and it's the description as well as the photos.

It only happens on the first return, though. After it's entered a second time, going to preview and back doesn't lose it. I told people on 151 to type junk into the field, preview, then return before filling in the form for real. Not the best of ideas but ebay used to have the same problem.

In fact, ebay had (and still does have) so many problems that most don't use the on-line input but use a listing program that lets them fill their fields with a data file and then upload them as a batch.

When I list, I put all my data into a template.txt file and give it the same name as the base name of the photos. So doll11.jpg, doll12.jpg ...doll16.jpg would have a file doll1.txt Then it's just a matter of copy and paste. Most people won't do this, though. If there isn't a menu, they're lost. So I can write something for them to generate the file on their own system, but getting the data from their system to my web space is the problem. That and assigning the unique item number.
Maybe next year. :)

Thanks and I'm going to go try your answer, now with the images.

Michele

Title: Re: Auction open and close times
Post by thisolddoll on 11/23/03 at 00:42:12

Getting there! OK - this shows what I has saying but it gets lost in the screen wrap, I'm afraid:

# if $image[0] contains "http:" then (it's somewhere else on the web so this assignment to $disp_img works.

my $disp_img.= qq|<img src="$image[0]" width="50">|;

# but if the program uploaded it, then it doesn't contain http: so then this works:
my $disp_img.= qq|<img src="$config{'img_url'}/$image[0]" width="50">|;

So, the point is, if the upload procedure uploaded the full string to the data file, then $disp_image could have the same value no matter where the image is or how it got there.

Otherwise, the $image[0] string could be tested before the value of $disp_img is assigned, but I think that's a bit messy - more of a patch then a design. One drawback is slightly larger data files, but one advantage is not needing to ad a new instruction to do the string compare and act on the result.

Anyway, if this works, it's an add on that only needs changing about six lines of code to implement. :)

Title: Re: Images
Post by Forum Admin on 11/23/03 at 13:14:32

You can do it this way:

search sub disp_list for:

$image
? ($img_info = qq|<img src="$config{'icon_url'}/$config{'if_image'}" border="0">|)
: ($img_info = qq|<img src="$config{'icon_url'}/$config{'no_image'}" border="0">|);

and replace the lines with the following code:

my @image = ();
$image
? do {
@image = split / /, $image;
$image !~ /http\:/
? ($img_info = qq|<img src="$config{'img_url'}/$image"@{[img_size($image[0], 50)]}>|)
: ($img_info = qq|<img src="$image[0]" width=50 border=0>|);

}
: ($img_info = qq|<img src="$config{'icon_url'}/$config{'no_image'}" border="0">|);