C/D/CD/BF data - new MFP feature or standalone application?

Hi,

Betfair horse data doesn't include the C/D/CD/BF data that a lot of other racing related sites (e.g. Sportinglife.com) do.

The usual response is "MFP can only work with the data Betfair provides", however I have seen other products which take their data from other sites to complile selections.  So presumably those sites offer API services.

So.......why can't MFP do the same?

Or......can a standalone application be written that will extract horses names which have C/D/CD/BF data and produce text files (one for each code) that MFP can then use?

The workaround to this (current) shortfall involves a time consuming process of manually compiling a list of horses with the data in question (let's use BF as an example) in a text file and then using the trigger condition "Selection is/isn't in file BF.TXT" depending on what it is you are doing.  It's the manual production of the text file that is a) Time consuming b) Tedious.  Surely an ideal opportunity to automate the process?  Isn't that what computers and Welldone do best?

If I knew how to code I'd give it a go myself!

Thanks for reading,

Wez

We don't work with third party providers not because we are evil ;(
The major problem is with matching selections' names from these sources to BetFair's ones. For example, in soccer/tennis the names of teams can be spelled in various ways, with abbreviations etc.
In horse racing it's less common for a horse's name to differ dramatically from BetFair's spelling (but happens sometimes).

Therefore, technically we can draw data from third parties, but because of possible errors we don't do this as we can't take responsibility for our software's reliability in this case.

Hi Tim,

thanks for the reply - not what I was hoping for so let me have another go!! 

Regarding the matching of the selection's names I was thinking about horse racing only and as you say yourself, "In horse racing it's less common for a horse's name to differ dramatically from BetFair's spelling (but happens sometimes)."

So for me that is absolutely no different to me copying 'n' pasting from a website into a text file and then having to remove any apostrophes.  It is up to me as the user to check the data is correct and consistent.  I don't even check the spelling from one website to Betfair now so I really don't see that as an issue!

As to your final point, which I think I have addressed above, "...because of possible errors we don't do this as we can't take responsibility for our software's reliability in this case".  I think the terms reliability and accuracy are being confused here.  Software reliability is does it run reliably and produce the output expected (i.e. Text files)?  The accuracy of the output (i.e. Spelling of names) is the user's responsibility/risk, not the software's.

Have I convinved you yet?

I'd be interested in what other think about this.

regards

Wez