Python Deal searching script

[VHockey86]

I know this forum isn't really heavily into programming -- but I wrote this script for my own use and thought others here might find it useful.

http://www.andrewpangborn.com/files/deal_searcher.py

It's a script written in python that searches deal websites (such as our own resellerratings.com) for products and emails them to you.

You have to define some email settings (such as an SMTP server, and a target email address).

The next step is to customize the list of products you want to search for. This is just an array of strings. The constants at the top of the script are commented pretty well, so you should be able to figure it out. If anything is confusing, just post and I'll try to clarify.

It keeps a history of deals, so you wont get the same ones emailed to you continually.

Its intended to be run as a scheduled task in windows, or as a cron job in linux. I have mine run on an hourly basis.
Most linux distros should have python installed by default. Windows users will need to install the python runtime.
http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.4.3/python-2.4.3.msi
No compilation is needed, just double click on the script and it'll run in a command-line window with the python interpreter/runtime.

Here's an example of what the output looks like (that gets emailed to you)

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Deal found on site: http://bensbargains.net

Deal #1: Product: 20.1"
BenQ FP202W Black 20.1" Digital LCD $295 at

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I guess thats all,
VHockey86

[RobRich]

The script looks interesting. Thanks for sharing.

I only did a quick skim of the code, and it appears you are searching HTML for keyword strings. If you want to speed up the process, you might want to look into searching RSS feeds in a future version. Your thoughts?

[VHockey86]

Yes, that would be a much better approach, assuming the sites all provide RSS feeds.

Normally I use the BeautifulSoup library for python to help with webscraping, but I didn't want to have to hard-code the scraping for each individual webpage.

I know that things like keywords found in links can sort of throw off the script as it is now. Basically it works well enough for me that I haven't put alot of effort into error checking and fanciness.

I appreciate the feedback and ideas.