C+P off racing post

[arthur]

Hi

I am trying to copy and past the the dog racing results into excel from the Racing Post.The trouble is it C+P's everything apart from the dog trap numbers,which I think are in some java thingymagic form on their site.
AN EG TAKEN EARLIER
A4 470m Flat
7:38
Grade: A4 Prize: £66 Distance: 470m Going: -30
Hide all comments in running Hide all pedigrees .
POSITION DOG SP SEC TIME DIST TRAINER

1st Noirs Blue 7/4 4.32 28.68 J McCombe
be B Droopys Scolari-Noirs Magic Jun10 (SsnSup)
early pace, always led rails
Notice all the details apart from the trap number!!!!!!!

I have tried the import feature but this doesn't work either.
Anybody got any suggestions:confused as to how to import these trap numbers into excel.
Getting dog data is a bit of a pain in the bottom.
Failing this does anybody know where I can get dog data downloaded into comma seperated files(or something like that)
I have tried greyhoud-data,sportinglife,bdb sites but cant seem to find any bugger offering that service.
My programming skills are ancient and practically non existent (cobol) so I haven't a clue how to get all this stuff for free off a site,like what all these clever PHP,Python and C++ bods do.

Many thanks
Arthur

[kawasaki]

try to open site with different browser. i remember couldnt copy something in firefox, copyed from googles chrome

[arthur]

Hi Kawasaki,

Thanks for your reply I have however tried all the browsers and have the same problem.I also noticed that with most websites that contains table data there is a facility in excel that enables you to click on a yellow tick that in turn highlights the required table for importing into a spreadsheet(Excel in this case).But the racing post site have somehow disabled this facility.
Here is a link to the dog results

http://www.racingpost.com/greyhounds/result_home.sd#resultDay=2013-02-09&raceId=1211629

you can see that the actual trap numbers although visible will not C+P with the rest of the data..

I might be barking up the wrong tree but perhaps there is a digereedoo in the browsers that enable this,I will go in search and report any findings

Thanks again kawasaki.
Art

[kawasaki]

because thats an image http://ui.racingpost.com/release/v46...p-spr.46.0.png

[arthur]

Hi Kawasaki,

Hmmm! so does this mean C+P is impossible,or is there another extraction method available?.

cheers
arthur

[kawasaki]

why you cant copy from sportinglife?
yesterday Coventry 17:30


1 (2) Barnagrane Colin (d - bk) ALed M H Massey 3 35.5 11 16.09 16.09 5/2j
2 (4w) 1.5 Follow The Light (d - bd) ClrRun A M Kibble 3 33.4 22 16.21 16.21 3/1
3 (1) 1.5 Tybar Katie (b - bk) MsdBrk B Denby 2 30.2 63 16.33 16.33 5/2j
4 (5w) 0.75 Simba Lion King (d - f) ClrRun P J Dolby 3 34.4 34 16.39 16.39 7/2
5 (6w) 1.25 Black Dingle (d - bk) ClrRun J C Irving 3 29.4 55 16.49 16.49 7/1
6 (3) 3.5 Destined Pride (d - bd) Crd1 R W Athow 4 31.7 46 16.77 16.77 5/1


as i understand, trap numbers are in brackets


or http://www.thedogs.co.uk/resultsRace...ate=12/03/2013

1 Barnagrane Colin 2 5/2JF 16.09
bk d Barnagrane Brian - Barnagrane Lass May-2009 (Trainer:M H Massey)
Comment: ALed

2 Follow The Light 4 3/1 16.21 (1 1/2)
bd d Hondo Black - Tiny Light Apr-2009 (Trainer:A M Kibble)
Comment: ClrRun

3 Tybar Katie 1 5/2JF 16.33 (1 1/2)
(Season:Suppressed) bk b Farloe Reason - Ellies Express Jul-2010 (Trainer:B Denby)
Comment: MsdBrk

4 Simba Lion King 5 7/2 16.39 (3/4)
f d Ballymac Maeve - Tahiti Pearl Jun-2009 (Trainer:P J Dolby)
Comment: ClrRun

5 Black Dingle 6 7/1 16.49 (1 1/4)
bk d Hondo Dingle - Pepsi Ding Oct-2009 (Trainer:J C Irving)
Comment: ClrRun

6 Destined Pride 3 5/1 16.77 (3 1/2)

from thedogs.co.uk seems they are copyed delimited, pastes in excel in separate cells okay, dont know how with import in excel though, excel always sucked with that or use some other service, just google ''greyhound results uk'', there are many other.

for excel import thingy to work properlly, i suspect data must be arranged properly BEFORE putting that data online, rarely you can just import anything your eyes see on display. or we just dont know something, like you need to press some checkbox somewhere in dark deep recesses of hell in excels menus or do some VBA programming. or maybe use OCR software like ''abby fine reader'' first or something

i remember ole days i needed too something alike yours, to paste some garbage into excel, i was pasting into text program first ''rj text editor'' if i remember correctly, then run couple macros and voila, have nice ''pasteable'' text. you can always find some way around if you really want

[arthur]

Hi Kawasaki,
Thanks for your reply.

All the sites you mention have drawbacks for tortoise speed C+P ancient egyptian method of data collection

Ye sporting life only allows one race at a time it doesn't present a complete meeting on one page,and the actual results only go back a few days,this means finding a way of copying the urls and stuff like that.
The dogs.com is a bit messy when downloaded and i dont think it includes non-bags meetings.
And as we know the RP keeps it's traps to itself.
Greyhound-data.com boasts about being the biggest dog database on the planet but doesn't include trainers andhas a tendency to miss out groups of races at a meeting,which has the knock on effect of ruining any ingenious Macros I dream up.
I have tried C+Png into various text files to see if they bring the Racing Post trap number with them but alas to no avail.
I think I will have to polish up on my programming skills(cobol) and see if I can find away of pressing a button and getting all the dogs/horse/sports info into a nice crispy database:
Plodding on is the name of the game
You may well be right about a little widget hidden away in the dark consiousness of Excel that would make importing work
Try Try and try again.
If i come up with any gizmo's I will post them up here.
I know everyone seems to think the dogs is just a K9 lottery but I think there are quite a few trends there to be exploited.The simple fact that favourites come in roughly 30% of the time is proof in itslef that some sort of pattern or logic exists(he said grimacing)
Thanks again for your suggestions.
cheers
art.

[doubleback]

thedogs.co.uk has all the day's results - bags, rags, handbags, glad rags ... etc etc ...

I tried to copy and paste from the website into excel, but the fractional odds kept changing to dates.

To get around that issue, I performed a web query ...

Data >

From Web >

A browser opens - put in the address above >

Select the data you wish to copy by pressing the arrows in yellow boxes >

In the top right of the window there is an Options tab - hit that and tick Disable date recognition >

Hit the Import tab, which is in the bottom right >

Done ...

[arthur]

Hi DoubleBack.
Thanks for your reply.I agree the dogs is quite a good site but a bit messy to work with.
I am trying to find a magic way of automating the whole thing.I will get back to you all next christmas to see if I am any nearer(its time to get to grips with looping)

cheers
arty

[doubleback]

Well, once the web query has put the data into Excel you can run a macro to tidy things up ...





It is also worth noting how the url of different meetings vary ...

http://thedogs.co.uk/trap6/res_race_result_full.php?meetingid=271840

http://thedogs.co.uk/trap6/res_race_result_full.php?meetingid=271841

http://thedogs.co.uk/trap6/res_race_result_full.php?meetingid=271842

http://thedogs.co.uk/trap6/res_race_result_full.php?meetingid=271843

http://thedogs.co.uk/trap6/res_race_result_full.php?meetingid=271844

[arthur]

Hi Doubleback,
Thanks for the reply.
I have been plodding on with a macro and have managed to get it more or less prepared to send over to the database:
track date time Grade distance Fin Greyhound Trap SP Time/Sec. Time/Distance trainer
Coventry 16/03/2013 19:30 Grade A9 485m 1 Wee Secret 5 12/1 5.62 31.09 (Trainer: M H Massey)
Coventry 16/03/2013 19:30 Grade A9 485m 2 Hold On Halo 6 3/1 5.64 31.13 (1/2) (Trainer: J Curry)
Coventry 16/03/2013 19:30 Grade A9 485m 3 Twisted Momma 2 4/1 5.68 31.19 (3/4) (Trainer: L H Wynn)
Coventry 16/03/2013 19:30 Grade A9 485m 4 Twiglish Tulula 4 4/1 5.7 31.23 (1/2) (Trainer: A W Lyford)
Coventry 16/03/2013 19:30 Grade A9 485m 5 See Emily Play 1 8/1 5.73 31.29 (3/4) (Trainer: C Weatherall)
Coventry 16/03/2013 19:30 Grade A9 485m 6 Bit View Ferrari 3 2/1F 5.72 31.59 (3 3/4) (Trainer: J Watts)

The brackets around the trainers name are a bit of a nuisance and I might try the text splitter on that.It still is a bit boring C+Peeing then macroing,and I am fiddling around with VBA to see if I can get it all a bit more automated.

Cheers
Art

[doubleback]

Looks like you're nearly there ...

Excel's Find and Replace will remove the brackets pretty easily ...

[determined trader]

Woofers Database

Hi Arthur,
I've just read the posts relating to greyhounds and databases and wondered if you might be able to find something on here.....

http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOo3_User_Guides/OOo3.3_Chapters_ODT

I've been using Open Office instead of Excell for ages (It's free!) and there are loads of useful guides, though to be honest I haven't ploughed my way thru many yet!

I've been trialing laying GH's with a bot and it looks promising but can throw up quite a lot of losers (Winners!) so the answer seems to be set a days reasonable NP and have a bank of a couple of hundred % to start.

I'll be interested to see how you get on - I think there's loads of potential with GH's as there's so many events every day of the week (Normally around 100) and most people seem to ignore them at the moment.
If a lot more people become interested it will really sort out the low liquidity and become self-fulfilling. Thirty days of winnings should encourage lots more entrants even if low amounts - I don't think many people bother to do the maths (100 events x 30 days x small profits = happy bank manager!)...dt