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Switch-Scraper (Work in Progress)

Scrapes the newest submissions to /r/NintendoSwitchDeals and texts the most probable deals for a Nintendo Switch to your phone!

Backstory

I personally was on the hunt for good deals on a Nintendo Switch console since I wanted a portable gaming system that I could bring abroad during college. Once the project was off the ground and producing results, I was able to use the script to text me recent Nintendo Switch deals so that I could pounce on the deals before the deal expired. I later added support for searching for specific game deals, since the Nintendo system would be of no use to me without any games for the system.

What Technologies were Used?

Early Iteration (Get Everthying Working)

  • Python
  • JSON

Intermediate Iteration (Streamline Features with new Technologies)

  • Python
  • TwilioAPI
  • MongoDB

Current Iteration (Including a Front End)

  • Python
  • Flask
  • MongoDB
  • HTML/CSS

General Project Comments/Complaints/Reflection

Looking back on this project, from a purely efficiency standpoint, this project serves no real purpose for me since I could easily keep refreshing the Switch deals subreddit and pounce on a deal that I liked. I really didn't have to use a DBMS because I could have probably simply scraped the new posts, decide if any were valid deals, and text it to my phone. I initially used a database because since I wanted to take care of the case where the script scrapes the same posts and texts multiple copies to me; this was remedied by storing all posts into the database. However, because the mod team on the subreddit is pretty good, I could have only kept the time stamp of the last post I scrape and check posts after that time stamp such that no post would be scraped more than once. I didn't really need a front end since this was more of a personal project. With all that said, I enjoyed this project because it introduced me to new technologies that I've never used before. I've developed skills that will help me for future projects.

Credits to Andres Rodriguez and Brandon Chen

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Scrapes the newest submissions to /r/NintendoSwitchDeals and texts the most probable deals for a Nintendo Switch to your phone!

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