A question for software techies

Vic_980 · 24 May 2005 at 7:16PM

I'm doing an I.T. project at Uni and am building some software for a made-up used car dealer.

I'm trying to get hold of a list of all car manufacturers and models, so I can put it in some drop down boxes for customers to provide a database search facility (similar to the quick search here: https://www.autotrader.co.uk). e.g. You click AUDI and you get a list which narrows down to A2, A3, A4 etc.

Managed to get the dropdown code working, but I'd really like to put some real data in there.

Does anyone know of anywhere where I can get this info from (preferably in either table / excel or XML format).

Or does anyone know a clever way of extracting this data from the dropdowns on a existing website (cough).

My fingers are hurting typing it all in!

woo · 24 May 2005 at 8:28PM

on the site where you have seen these drop downs can you do a view page source in a browser and copy the html select or are they not visible? on the auto trader..

just done it and didn't quite work. managed to save the html locally and you can extract the options e.g. <option value="AC">AC</option><option value="AIXAM">AIXAM</option><option value="ALFA ROMEO">ALFA ROMEO</option><option value="ARIEL">ARIEL</option><option value="ASIA">ASIA</option><option value="ASTON MARTIN">ASTON MARTIN</option><option value="AUBURN">AUBURN</option><option value="AUDI">AUDI</option><option value="AUSTIN">AUSTIN</option><option value="BENTLEY">BENTLEY</option><option value="BMW">BMW</option><option

maybe if you select the car then you might get be able to see the model list as well?

Vic_980 · 24 May 2005 at 8:34PM

Done that, the dropdowns are populated via a Javascript array which is held in a separate file (_make_model.js).

Trick is now converting this into a table or spreadsheet form!

ManAtHome · 24 May 2005 at 8:41PM

This may help (I think you'll need GROUP.DAT)
http://www.abi.org.uk/carinsurance/download.asp

ps. if you download it then rename as GROUP.TXT you can use Exel text file parser (fixed width) to split into columns (excuse if you already knew that)

NellyLock · 24 May 2005 at 8:56PM

Vic_980 wrote:

Done that, the dropdowns are populated via a Javascript array which is held in a separate file (_make_model.js).

Trick is now converting this into a table or spreadsheet form!

here you go...here that model.js as a spreadsheet anyway

https://www.neillock.co.uk/model.xls

neil

Vic_980 · 24 May 2005 at 9:35PM

Sorted - wonderful stuff people!

I'll put some mentions in the project thanking you for all your help!!!!

Chippy_Minton · 24 May 2005 at 9:53PM

Well, NellyLock beat me to it, but I might as well post my code now that I've finished it

:

1. Save _make_model.js somewhere on your C: drive.

2. Copy and paste the following code into Notepad and save it as cars.html in the same directory.

<HTML><HEAD>
<SCRIPT type="text/JavaScript" language="JavaScript" src="_make_model.js"></SCRIPT>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE='JavaScript'> 
function createCarsFile()
!!
     var filename = 'c:/temp/cars2.txt'; 
     var fso = new ActiveXObject('Scripting.FileSystemObject'); 
     var file = fso.CreateTextFile(filename, true);
     var i, j;
     for (i = 2; i < make_v.length; i++) // Start from 2 to skip 'MAKE' and 'ANY' make
     !!
        file.Write(make_v[i] + ",");
        for (j = 1; j < _model[i].length; j++) // Start from 1 to skip 'ANY' model
        !!
	    file.write(_model[i][j] + ",");
        }
        file.writeLine();
     }
     file.Close();
     alert(filename + " created");
} 
</SCRIPT> 
</HEAD> 
<BODY onload='createCarsFile()'> 
</BODY> 
</HTML>

3. Using Internet Explorer (you can't use Firefox etc. because the above uses ActiveX), open cars.html.

4. You've created c:\temp\cars.txt, which is a CSV file.

NB - in the above code change the 3 occurrences of "!!" to an opening curly bracket (the forum doesn't like me typing it!)

NellyLock · 25 May 2005 at 8:35AM

eheh i went the non-techy root

im so proud of myself (what a computer scientist i am

)...wacked it into excel and then split into columns

using different delimeters...took seconds...:)

A question for software techies

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