Well, as I said, it depends on how you're getting the data. If you're getting it in the browser with Javascript, then you might be able to save it to a local SQLite database, or connect to a server with Ajax and dump it into a database there. But a browser is limited for security reasons in what it can do on the local system and what servers it can contact other than the one already in the window. Perhaps there are ways around those limits; I don't know.

On the other hand, if you're getting the data by sniffing your network traffic or sticking some kind of proxy between client and server, then that program could save it to a database. If the poker client is standalone, not browser-based, that seems like the most likely method.

I don't have any resources to suggest, but I think you may want to try terms other than "scraping." Scraping normally means pulling web pages and mining data out of them one after another. You're not talking about web pages here; you might not be talking about the web at all. To scrape something, as I understand the term, you run a program that stands in for the client and grab what the server returns. That would be the ultimate way to run a bot -- have it connect in place of the official software -- but that's very unlikely to be possible. You need a way to run the poker software and get the chat stream that goes to it. Try doing your searches and adding "traffic sniff(ing|er)" and "proxy" to see if you find anything.

I don't know how the sites that are selling it are doing it, or what they're calling "scraping." Could be any of the methods I mentioned, or something I haven't thought of. Maybe the sites make the table chat available via RSS, for all I know. I still doubt that a database of action more than a few hours old would be useful, but I could be wrong.

Aaron B.
Available for small or large Perl jobs; see my home node.

In reply to Re^3: Poker Datamine by aaron_baugher
in thread Poker Datamine by bennierounder

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.