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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2015
    Posts
    1

    Help College Entrepreneur

    I have a great idea, however I am not a very good coder (I have just begun taking classes) so I do not have much knowledge. I was wondering if were even possible for someone to write a program that could scan through a website (such as ESPN or something) and return specific stats for players. For example, Search ESPN for Peyton Manning and have it return his stats and take them through a criteria. Such as does his passer rating exceed such a number x and if it does we would be given a "Pass" if his Passer Rating were above x and a "fail" if it were lower. I just want to know if this is even possible before I take a leap of faith. Can anybody help me?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2000
    Location
    Belgium (Europe)
    Posts
    4,626

    Re: Help College Entrepreneur

    If they provide an API for that data (i.e. a webservice") then yes, should be fairly easy. If you can't find one, e-mail them asking if it's available.

    if they don't provide an API, then "maybe" you can do this by extracting data from the html pages, but this is a bad idea because
    a) it's a lot of work
    b) whenever they decide to change the layout of their site, you'll have to change your code to match.
    c) whenever they decide to change the access methodology, you'll have to change yoru code to match.
    d) if they aren't providing an API, then maybe they don't want others to use this information in an automated way. You using it anyway might be a violation of the TOS. They probably won't notice if you only use this program yourself, but if you release/sell the program and it gets a lot of attention, you're opening yourself to all sorts of nasties.

    There may be other locations where the data you seek is available as a webservice, so look around. I would start at the organisation that hosts the games as a start.

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