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Do providers have APIs that serve lists of offers?
trycatchthis
Member
in General
Most of the providers appear to use WHMCMS or similar. Do these have API's which allow you to get a full list of offers and specs? ( If so can any responders link to relevant documentation. )
Or do you need to write a web scraping tool?
Comments
It can be done, here's an example: https://dah85.com/lists/myracknerdcom.html
Did you have to write a scraping tool or does WHMCMS have an api?
Providers have to create their own APIs, WHMCS doesn't provide one by default and there doesn't seem to be a module for that.
At FluidStack, I recently helped to create one (and helped to create the whole custom client area too):
https://docs.fluidstack.io/plans/
But for pretty much all providers, you need your own web scraping tool.
It's a bit of both, really. I'll give you fair warning, it's a road paved with trouble.
its just scraping of all pid
I'm thinking this doesn't exist because it's highly undesirable for providers.
It's just a race to the bottom then...whoever has the cheapest sorts the highest. Anything special about the provider (reputation, free add-ons, etc.) is lost when people are looking at a big table of sorted prices.
Basically most of them don't.
Some do, in some cases the API sucks ass, so you better of be scraping it anyway.
WHMCS, a popular billing and automation platform for web hosting companies, does indeed offer an API that allows you to retrieve information about offers and specifications. With the API, you can perform various actions such as fetching product details, managing orders, and more. You typically don't need to resort to web scraping if the provider offers a well-documented business information API.
From what I have seen with many of these sites, whomever pays the highest affiliate kickbacks are often sorted and rated the highest.