eBay Watcher
Neil Cumpstey
24 July 7


Installation
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Extract the tarball. Copy the contents of the Controls and Displays folders to ~/.gdesklets/Controls and ~/.gdesklets/Displays respectively. You'll probably need to restart gDesklets.


First Run
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When first started, a gDesklets error will be produced. You'll have to update the uri of the item_list file in the preferences. It'll now be fine as long as the desklet stays open. In order that this doesn't appear every time the desklet is closed and restated, you can change the line in the .display file, towards to top of the <script> section. Unfortunately gDesklets doesn't seem to understand relative uris in the <script> section, even though it does in the xml section of the .display file.

The item_list file and FileToList Control is necessary as it is currently impossible to store list data in the desklet preferences. I hope this will soon be available.


Bug
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I haven't yet incorporated a great deal of error handling. The desklet checks that an item number has the correct 12 digit format, but if it does and is not a genuine item number an error may be produced. Also, an error may be produced if the list contains an expired item from one of the sections of eBay which uses different urls, such as eBay Motors. Current and recently expired auctions can be found on the standard url of http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=#, but at some point this begins to forward to http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&viewitem=&item=#, which will lead to a crash. I don't know when this happens, but it seems to be more than a couple of days after the auction end.



