Sports scores plugin?

[gruskada]

I was thinking about developing a plugin to display sports scores. You could enter your favorite teams in the config, and it would display scores (or the next game date) for in-season sports on a seperate "Sports" page. It would also be great to be able to have the option to show a pop-up OSD to show the score for a few seconds when your (or the oppossing team) scores a point (if possible with the API...).

I'd probably start off with one or two sports, and not worry about the OSD part for now, then build on from there. I only have about a year's worth of .NET experience, so it may take a while to get going on this, but I'll definitely give it a try. I'd love to hear any thoughts or ideas you may have. Thanks in advance.

gruskada

[Spartan]

I recommend using cbs.sportsline.com for your source (good for USA anyways).

Once you have a an account with them, you can use this hyperlink (and parse it in the code behind) http://cbs.sportsline.com/my/box-scoreboards/ This way would not have to deal with the complexity of only showing your favorite teams' scores. Leave that part for the other guys.

I am not aware of any pure XML sources for sports scores.

[gruskada]

Thanks, Spartan. That's a great idea. I'll have to set up an account there and play around with it.

gruskada

[Spartan]

Alternatively, if you did not want to force users to set up an account, you could use these scores links

MLB: http://www.sportsline.com/mlb/box-scoreboards
NFL: http://www.sportsline.com/nfl/box-scoreboards
NCAA Football: http://www.sportsline.com/collegefootbal...coreboards
NCAA Basketball: http://www.sportsline.com/collegebasketb...coreboards
NHL: http://www.sportsline.com/nhl/box-scoreboards
NBA: http://www.sportsline.com/nba/box-scoreboards
Tennis: http://www.sportsline.com/tennis/box-scoreboards

if you throw a ?qs_single=1 at the end of the URL, you will only get today's scores. Example: http://www.sportsline.com/nba/box-scoreb...s_single=1

[gruskada]

Thanks again. I've setup (actually found) my account at SportsLine. The output will definitely require a bit of RegEx-ing, if that's the one I go with, but it's doable (the free RegEx tool "Expresso" is great for testing out this type of stuff...).

I'm going to sign up for a ton of sports site's tonight, and see which one offers the best format for parsing (hopefully somebody's got XML - maybe I can get an RSS feed from somewhere...). I'll also look into what (if any) permission is required - I'd hate to do all the work on this just to get a cease and desist order...

gruskada

[elite]

I really like the OSD idea if the API will allow...

Are scores available as an RSS feed? - If so, a generic RSS reader might be more useful - so not only scores can be displayed but also news etc...

I've thought about this for a while, but unfortunatley I know zero about C# etc...

[nkh]

I found this: http://www.exactscores.com/
They have some commercial links in their xml file, but the results look okay: http://www.exactscores.com/SoccerLivescoreXml.xml

Alternatively, this: http://www.livescore.com has live score for quite a few soccer leagues. They haven't got an xml feed, but they do have a wap version which may or may not be easier to convert into something usefull

[gruskada]

Ugh - it's not looking good so far:

"Permission to use materials from the Service (the "Materials") is granted provided that: (a) The copyright notice appears in all copies; (b) Use of such Materials is for informational and non-commercial or personal use only and will not be copied or posted on any network computer or broadcast in any media; and © No modifications of the Materials are made."
- from SportsLine.com's terms of service

I've got an email in to their legal department asking for "express written permission". We'll see how that goes...

gruskada

[nkh]

oh, didn't notice that... though... a program that reads a file and displays parts of it on the users screen.. is that illigal? isn't it roughly the same as setting your browser to not show adds online?

[sub]

You wouldnt be the first plugin to be grabbing information from a website without permission...