From: Paul Robinson <paul@...>
Date: 2006-05-01T22:30:06+09:00
Subject: Betfair API library?

Hi all,

For those of you in jurisdictions where access to gambling sites is  
illegal, you may want to skip this message/thread.

Betfair is the world's leading betting exchange site at http:// 
www.betfair.com and within the UK has shaken up the bookmaking  
industry in interesting ways. If you don't know what exchange betting  
is, google for it as it's too big a topic to discuss here.

Some years ago they introduced an API service at http:// 
api.betfair.com which was initially launched at the rather steep  
price of �100/month for 'read' access to market data and �200/month  
for access to be able to place bets. I originally was on the beta  
program but didn't get very far in developing a library before these  
charges came in. Most implementations I've seen have been in .NET and/ 
or are commercially available only for very high fees.

There is now a free version of the API which limits the number of  
transactions that can be conducted per minute. As a result,  
development of a library is now not going to be a financially  
prohibitive exercise. Since the beta program ended, I've discovered  
Ruby and am thinking it might be worth giving this another go.

I was wondering if anybody had been working on developing a library  
and associated suite of tools for the API in Ruby, or if anybody  
would be interested on working on it with me? A WSDL file is  
available, but last time I tried to auto-generate any proxy classes  
it broke in interesting ways, and as I'm not too familiar with Web  
Service client development in Ruby, I was wondering if anybody would  
like to get involved?

The project I have in mind is to develop a suite of tools to be  
released as open source (MIT) that would allow users to integrate  
Betfair market data into their own projects, develop bots in Ruby and  
for me to better understand web services using one of the most  
complicated API services available on the Internet today.

If other exchange sites develop similar API products (or they're out  
there already and I'm not aware of them), it might be possible to  
extend this project so that arbitration and multiple-site market  
management scripts can be easily produced.

Anybody else interested? If so, I'll get something set up on  
Rubyforge.org in the near future and we'll get rolling.

--
Paul Robinson