WoWInterface - GetAuctionItemInfo removing items from auction house page

WoWInterface (https://www.wowinterface.com/forums/index.php)

- Lua/XML Help (https://www.wowinterface.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=16)

- - GetAuctionItemInfo removing items from auction house page (https://www.wowinterface.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57372)

GetAuctionItemInfo removing items from auction house page

I am playing around with developing a personal auction house API, but I am running into one issue that I don't know how to approach solving. My current goal is to do a GetAll search and then record the information for each of the items. The problem is that calling GetAuctionItemInfo seems to be able to update the list, removing auctions. Here's a high level explanation of what my issue is:

I do a GetAll search
I call GetAuctionItemInfo on auction 1
It returns none, some, or all of the information
If it returns some of the information, I have to call GetAuctionItemInfo on it again

The problem is that in that last step, if the auction was removed from the list, then I might be calling GetAuctionItemInfo on a new auction, and there doesn't seem to be a way to guarantee that it is the same.

Maybe I'm just misunderstanding something? If anyone could give some guidance for this I would greatly appreciate it, thanks!

Are you registering for this event? https://wow.gamepedia.com/AUCTION_ITEM_LIST_UPDATE

I wasn't but I think that was because of my assumption that GetAuctionItemInfo could update any auction in the list, not just the auction that it was called on, which would make it unclear whether the item being removed would affect the current index or not. In hindsight that seems like the less likely case. Thanks for the help!

Ok, so it seems that I was right the first time. After testing it appears that GetAuctionItemInfo can update the list, removing any item, not just the one being scanned. This means that even if I am registering AUCTION_ITEM_LIST_UPDATE and the list updates, I don't know whether the removed item is before, after, or at my current index.

Is it possible to stop GetAuctionItemInfo from updating the list? I can't seem to find documentation for the function. I'm really not sure how to proceed, so any help would again be appreciated, thanks.

Not exactly sure what the problem you're having is, but the most efficient way to handle a GetAll response is to ignore the event. just scan and keep track of your position in the results with periodic updates.

Lua Code:

local ScanPos;
local TotalAuctions = 1;
local Scanning = false;
local LastScanTime = 0;
 
Scanner = {};
function Scanner:Ready()
    return AuctionFrame and AuctionFrame:IsShown() and select(2,CanSendAuctionQuery());
end
function Scanner:CanStart()
    return (not Scanning) and self:Ready(), LastScanTime, 900;
end
function Scanner:Start()
    Scanning = true;
end
function Scanner:OnFinished(incomplete)
    Scanning, ScanPos, TotalAuctions = false;
    AuctionFrameBrowse:RegisterEvent('AUCTION_ITEM_LIST_UPDATE');
end
 
C_Timer.NewTicker(0.1,function()
    if not Scanning then return end
    
    local ready = Scanner:Ready();
    --[[
    if not TotalAuctions then -- first grab the auctionhouse size, this can be skipped
        if not ready then return end
        AuctionFrameBrowse:UnregisterEvent('AUCTION_ITEM_LIST_UPDATE');
        EventHandler:Register('AUCTION_ITEM_LIST_UPDATE',function()
            TotalAuctions = select(2,GetNumAuctionItems("list"))
            --print('total:',TotalAuctions);
            return true;
        end);
        QueryAuctionItems("",nil,nil,0,0,0,0,0,0,false);
        return;
    end
    --]]
    if not ScanPos then -- init scan
        if not ready then return end
        --print('Downloading');
        ScanPos = 0;
        LastScanTime = time();
        QueryAuctionItems("",nil,nil,0,0,0,0,0,0,true); -- GetAll
        return;
    end
    
    if CanSendAuctionQuery() then -- scan complete
        Scanner:OnFinished();
        return;
    end
    
    -- continue parsing auction data.
    local n, total = GetNumAuctionItems("list");
    if n ~= total or n <= ScanPos then
        return -- bad data block
    end
    local GetAuctionItemInfo = GetAuctionItemInfo;
    for i = ScanPos+1, n do
        --this is where you call your auction (single) result handler
        --Database:AddAuction(GetAuctionItemInfo('list', i));
    end
    
    print(n..'/'..TotalAuctions..': +'..(n-ScanPos),'('..floor((n/TotalAuctions)*100)..'%)');
    ScanPos = n;
end);
--[[
EventHandler:Register('AUCTION_HOUSE_CLOSED',function()
    if ScanPos then -- Scan interrupted
        Scanner:OnFinished(true);
    end
end);
--]]

I use a mix of the events and timer to wake up in
https://github.com/mooreatv/MoLib/bl...er/MoLibAH.lua

but after the first event (you do want to wait for the first AUCTION_ITEM_LIST_UPDATE because otherwise GetNumAuctionItems is 0) you can probably just indeed brute force it until you get all the items
(be nice to not hang the UI though)

I found I had to 'pre fetch' or pre ask for more items for them to get filled up, I'm not sure what's the best size but it is > 50 (for instance 500 is much faster overall than 50 which is the NUM_AUCTION_ITEMS_PER_PAGE default)

@elcius- from your (nice!) snippet, it seems you are actually trying to fetch all of them at once, does that work fine on a 60k+ result ?

it's a common misunderstanding that GetAll delivers the auctions all at once, that's why most people still listen for the event, or even worse they wait until everything as arrived and then lock up the game trying to process them all at once.
In actuality auctions get streamed over 1024 at a time, until near the end of the results.
results that have already arrived are immediately available in the results list, and thus can be processed while waiting for the rest, once more results arrive the result list will just expand.

I really appreciate all of the replies. I wrote a small test script to hopefully demonstrate my issue, and put it in an addon called "Test". The following is what you need to do, and after doing it the number of auctions should be different.

/test getall
Wait for the getall search to complete
/test count
Wait ~30 seconds (my guess is that in this time auctions expire / sell)
/test scan
Wait for the scan to finish
/test count

Code:

 -- Search the entire auction house at once

local function GetAll()

        if select(2, CanSendAuctionQuery()) then

                AuctionFrameBrowse:UnregisterEvent("AUCTION_ITEM_LIST_UPDATE")

                

                -- QueryAuctionItems(name, minLevel, maxLevel, page, isUsable, qualityIndex, getAll, exactMatch, filterData)

                QueryAuctionItems("", nil, nil, 0, false, 0, true, false, nil)

        end

end



 -- Display the number of items on the current auction house page

local function Count()

        print(GetNumAuctionItems("list") .. " items remaining")

end



local start

local finish



 -- Call GetAuctionItemInfo, GetAuctionItemTimeLeft and GetAuctionItemLink on each auction

local function Scan()

        finish = math.min(GetNumAuctionItems("list"), start + 1000)

        

        for index = start, finish do

                local info = GetAuctionItemInfo("list", index)

                local timeLeft = GetAuctionItemTimeLeft("list", index)

                local link = GetAuctionItemLink("list", index)

        end

        

        if finish < GetNumAuctionItems("list") then

                start = finish

                C_Timer.After(0, Scan)

        else

                print("Finished")

        end

end



local eventFrame = CreateFrame("FRAME")

eventFrame:RegisterEvent("ADDON_LOADED")

eventFrame:SetScript("OnEvent", function(_, event, addon)

        if event == "ADDON_LOADED" and addon == "Test" then

                SlashCmdList["Test"] = function(message)

                        if string.lower(message) == "getall" then

                                GetAll()

                        elseif string.lower(message) == "count" then

                                Count()

                        elseif string.lower(message) == "scan" then

                                start = 1

                                Scan()

                        end

                end

                

                SLASH_Test1 = "/Test"

        end

end)

I see, some auctions do get removed, most likely due to the fact character names of the posters get resolved when querying GetAuctionItemInfo, which in turn causes the auction list to refresh/update when a name is resolved.

I recommend you just process the auctions as soon as you get access to them, so as to ensure none are expired, like in my example.

Alternatively you can probably just scan the list in reverse from n to 1. not ideal since you need the final count, and should really avoid waiting for the download to finish before you start processing the auctions.

Another possible solution would be to just call GetAuctionItemInfo on all the auctions once, this will resolve all the names of the players, then do another pass after all the names are loaded, the second pass shouldn't drop any auctions.

Thanks for the suggestions. It does not seem to be the sellers names being retrieved that causes the update, as each subsequent pass removes more listings. I still believe that it is expired/selling auctions that is causing this update.

I also have to mention that it appears that GetAuctionItemTimeLeft is the only function that can remove auctions from the page, as long as AUCTION_ITEM_LIST_UPDATE is unregistered from AuctionFrameBrowse. I'm not sure what the implications of this are for non-getall scans, but my solution will likely be to simply exclude it and chalk it up as a bug. If anyone comes up with a better solution, please let me know, thanks!

We had some strangeness and I have an explanation:

It appears experimentally that if you wait enough (probably for auctions to expire) one of the GetAuctionItem* api becomes actually blocking (I suspect because it's reordering the result list) and causing reentrance (using coroutines)

This throws quite a wrench into an implementation expecting linear executing and only 1 timer running at a time

gory details are on https://github.com/mooreatv/MoLib/issues/16