How to get fresh working coupon data?

[rjf]

I pulled all the coupons for all the merchants and there are a ton of problems with the data.

1) Tons of non working coupons. For example:
http://prosperent.com/coupon/401244-2080-0/?k=Spir

2) Coupons that work but go to the wrong merchant.
http://prosperent.com/coupon/401244-2080-0/?k=Seas

3) Duplicate coupons. There are 643 occurrences of this coupon spread all throughout various merchants.
http://prosperent.com/coupon/401244-2080-0/?k=Free
Tons of coupons have 100+ duplicates.

I made a video that shows all the coupons on one page and some of the duplicate problems. https://vimeo.com/40995752

How are people working with this data? I guess it's possible to go through the data without too much trouble and filter out all the stuff thats not working, but it doesn't seem like that should be necessary.

[AcidRaZor]

Those url's look broken dude...



http://prosperent.com/coupon/214671-39-0/?k=Shop+MisterArt+Now&m=MisterArt.com&d=Shop+MisterArt.com+for+thousands+of+brand+name+a rt+%26+craft+supplies+at+up+to+75%25+off%21&referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.shoppersavvysave.com%2F&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fp%2Fsketch-kits&query=sketch+kits


That's how they should look like

[prosperent brian]

That's definitely an error on your end. Those url's are not complete at all. Coupon data is refreshed daily.

[rjf]

Oh ok weird. I'll try it again.

edit: some of the coupons work with a broken url to super confuse me haha..

[prosperent brian]

If your url's are missing the main parameters, we attempt to find a loose match based on what is there. So that is probably why you are seeing that.

[rjf]

I used the example code from the api doc's, pretty much thinking it must work lol. Anyway theres this thing in there:


substr($value, 0, 50)

I made the 50 higher and it seems to be working fine now.

BTW why's that in there? Why would anyone want the results purposely shorter?

[AcidRaZor]

I used the example code from the api doc's, pretty much thinking it must work lol. Anyway theres this thing in there:


substr($value, 0, 50)

I made the 50 higher and it seems to be working fine now.

BTW why's that in there? Why would anyone want the results purposely shorter?

Many reasons really. But I guess it's for aesthetics when displaying the merchant name and if it's longer than 50 characters. You don't have to have substr() in there at all, just use $value.

[Prosperent Andrew]

The code that was used here was from our example on how to use the API. It's main purpose is to give the user an idea of how to make a request; how to display the data thereafter is entirely up to the user. I guess having the substr in there can make is a little confusing, so that will be removed on the next update. If you actually look at the data returned, the full working urls are there.

[kotfare]

can we have that code AcidRazor / Andrew?
and dont look to me like that :)

[Prosperent Andrew]

The example code is in the API documentation, just login and click 'API' in the menu.