Colligate

A program to download and store auctions from the World of Warcraft API

This project is an attempt at creating a local snapshot of the ingame Auction house on a World of Warcraft realm. The snapshot data can then be used to visualize trends in the virtual economy or be used for statistical analysis.

Implemented Features

Request all active auctions on a realm for all three factions.

Download and parse the JSON file containing auction data from the WoW API.

Save the data in a PostgreSQL database.

Store ended auctions in an archive.

Resolve item id numbers to actual item names and item info, such as stats etc.

Store item info in a local cache for faster lookup.

Dependencies

This program requires on the following Ruby gems: Sequel sequel_pg pg Yajl

To install run:

gem install sequel sequel_pg yajl-ruby pg

How to use

Edit settings.yaml to contain the realms you want to monitor. The following is an example of a working configration.

---
- realm: argent-dawn
  region: eu
  locale: en_GB
- realm: alakir
  region: eu
  locale: en_GB

Valid WoW api regions are:

us : US
eu : Europe
kr : Korea : untested, but should work
tw : Taiwan : untested, but should work

Locales and regions:

Region		Host							Available Locales

US			https://us.api.battle.net/		en_US
es_MX
pt_BR
Europe		https://eu.api.battle.net/		en_GB
es_ES
fr_FR
ru_RU
de_DE
pt_PT
it_IT
Korea		https://kr.api.battle.net/		ko_KR
Taiwan		https://tw.api.battle.net/		zh_TW
China		https://www.battlenet.com.cn/	zh_CN

Realm names need to be spelled a bit different than usual. An example of that is argent-dawn, which is normally spelled Argent Dawn. I cannot provide a full list of valid realm names, however you can find the name of your realm through the WoW api.

To find the api name of your realm, go to:

[region].battle.net/api/wow/realm/status

... and search for your realm. Look for the "slug": tag.

Example:

Say I want to find out the api name of a european realm called: Argent Dawn. First I go to the following URL in my browser.

eu.battle.net/api/wow/realm/status

In the list, I search for argent dawn and find this:

..."status":false,"name":"Argent Dawn","slug":"argent-dawn"...

To make Colliage download data from Argent Dawn, I will have to insert "argent-dawn" as realm and eu as region into settings.yaml.

Run the main program “Colligate.rb” and add your battle.net api key as a launch parameter.

ruby Colligate.rb [you-api-key]