Service that helps to find “rare” products on TaoBao (+ a bit of free Google Translate API)
Greetings to all! I think very, very many people know what TaoBao is or at least heard.
For those who do not know: TaoBao is a giant Chinese marketplace, the amount of goods on which is measured by a number close to a billion. There you can find almost any whim of your imagination, and quite cheap. But there are two problems: find a product (the entire TaoBao website and all descriptions in Chinese) and deliver it (delivery on TaoBao only in China)
If the second problem is easily solved by many intermediaries, then the first one is a bit more complicated. If you want to find something interesting, unusual or beyond the scope of "everyday goods", then you will face a difficulty in the form of a language barrier.
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About two months ago, I tried to launch my online store, the range of which is quite unique for Russia. It was planned to purchase goods on TaoBao. The task of searching for goods and some ideas to simplify this tedious process were embodied in the idea of a service assistant. Some routine actions could be automated, which was done. What came out of this look under the cut.
Screen service home page
Almost always I quickly find the copies of the goods I need. But the problem is that in the search results on two or three pages of results products that meet my search criteria 3-5. The rest are the result of inaccurate translation, and for me they are “search rubbish”. Let's look at a simple, but at the same time a real example. We need to find here a heating pad for hands on TaoBao
In the photo of the package we see the brand name “winfire” and a couple of hieroglyphs that for us, as people who do not know Chinese, it will be difficult to drive into the search results. Just want to clarify that the brand is not important to us. We need a hand warmer of the same type.
If we try to do a search with the translation for the request "hand warmer", we get not what we were looking for.
If we try to search the hot-water bottle for the query "winfire", we will find it, along with a bunch of various winter shoes in the search results .
The results for the “WinFire” query are already interesting for us. It is not difficult to assume that in the names of products that meet our criteria among the hieroglyphs lie our “keywords”. Identifying them manually is a very ungrateful business. This is the main task of the service.
All you need is to copy the names of products that meet our needs in the input fields and click the button “find keywords”
In order to demonstrate this feature, on the main page of TaoHelp.Me, you can click on the “Demonstration” link and the fields will be filled with the characters from the above example.
After clicking the button “find keywords” you will see the translation of each name into Russian, as well as the hieroglyphs common to 50% of the names. The button “Search by keys on TaoBao” will open the search results in accordance with the specified keys. As you can see, now in the search results we see exactly what we were looking for.
You may have noticed that the button “find keywords” has changed its name to “refine results”. Now its function is to find common hieroglyphs not for 50% of titles, but for as many of them as possible (that is, if common characters were 品 怀金怀 暖手 宝, then after pressing the button 怀 暖 became). Now the search results have changed, and we can already see not only the product that interests us, but also its other varieties with consumables.
It is worth mentioning the options Latin and Hieroglyphs. If you include Latin, then the keywords will also include words consisting of the Latin alphabet (in our case, the word winfire)
Probably everyone knows that Google has already closed access to the API of its translator for quite some time. This is true, but the ability to use some features for free exists thanks to the website translator . I suspect that almost certainly, if you use it from the server side, you can get an ip ban very quickly, but if you use it on JS, then this problem is solved very easily. Here is an example using jQuery
Here, the q parameter is the original string; sl is the source language; tl - final language
For those who do not know: TaoBao is a giant Chinese marketplace, the amount of goods on which is measured by a number close to a billion. There you can find almost any whim of your imagination, and quite cheap. But there are two problems: find a product (the entire TaoBao website and all descriptions in Chinese) and deliver it (delivery on TaoBao only in China)
If the second problem is easily solved by many intermediaries, then the first one is a bit more complicated. If you want to find something interesting, unusual or beyond the scope of "everyday goods", then you will face a difficulty in the form of a language barrier.
')
About two months ago, I tried to launch my online store, the range of which is quite unique for Russia. It was planned to purchase goods on TaoBao. The task of searching for goods and some ideas to simplify this tedious process were embodied in the idea of a service assistant. Some routine actions could be automated, which was done. What came out of this look under the cut.
Screen service home page
Auxiliary "Widgets"
- Currency converter is nothing more than just a useful bun, about which it makes no sense to talk in detail. You can write arithmetic expressions of the form 150 + 10 (where 150 yuan is the price of goods, and 10 is the price of delivery in China). Arithmetic expressions are executed via eval ()
- Search with translation - opens the search results for goods on TaoBao, where the search field will translate the phrase you entered into Simplified Chinese (translation is done using Google Translate. This will be discussed later). Entering the search string in Russian and getting results for a query translated into Chinese is quite convenient and allows you to save time by typing the query into a Google translator. Some may argue that the sites for many intermediaries have a similar search form with the translation of the results of the issue into Russian. Of course have. And TaoBao even has an open API . But with this approach, one very useful opportunity is lost. Everyone probably saw in Google search results a phrase like "Maybe you meant ...". So, there is such a function on TaoBao
but it gets lost when working through the API
The main task of the service
Almost always I quickly find the copies of the goods I need. But the problem is that in the search results on two or three pages of results products that meet my search criteria 3-5. The rest are the result of inaccurate translation, and for me they are “search rubbish”. Let's look at a simple, but at the same time a real example. We need to find here a heating pad for hands on TaoBao
In the photo of the package we see the brand name “winfire” and a couple of hieroglyphs that for us, as people who do not know Chinese, it will be difficult to drive into the search results. Just want to clarify that the brand is not important to us. We need a hand warmer of the same type.If we try to do a search with the translation for the request "hand warmer", we get not what we were looking for.
If we try to search the hot-water bottle for the query "winfire", we will find it, along with a bunch of various winter shoes in the search results .
The results for the “WinFire” query are already interesting for us. It is not difficult to assume that in the names of products that meet our criteria among the hieroglyphs lie our “keywords”. Identifying them manually is a very ungrateful business. This is the main task of the service.
All you need is to copy the names of products that meet our needs in the input fields and click the button “find keywords”
In order to demonstrate this feature, on the main page of TaoHelp.Me, you can click on the “Demonstration” link and the fields will be filled with the characters from the above example.
After clicking the button “find keywords” you will see the translation of each name into Russian, as well as the hieroglyphs common to 50% of the names. The button “Search by keys on TaoBao” will open the search results in accordance with the specified keys. As you can see, now in the search results we see exactly what we were looking for.
You may have noticed that the button “find keywords” has changed its name to “refine results”. Now its function is to find common hieroglyphs not for 50% of titles, but for as many of them as possible (that is, if common characters were 品 怀金怀 暖手 宝, then after pressing the button 怀 暖 became). Now the search results have changed, and we can already see not only the product that interests us, but also its other varieties with consumables.
It is worth mentioning the options Latin and Hieroglyphs. If you include Latin, then the keywords will also include words consisting of the Latin alphabet (in our case, the word winfire)
How is the translation
Probably everyone knows that Google has already closed access to the API of its translator for quite some time. This is true, but the ability to use some features for free exists thanks to the website translator . I suspect that almost certainly, if you use it from the server side, you can get an ip ban very quickly, but if you use it on JS, then this problem is solved very easily. Here is an example using jQuery
$.post( "http://translate.googleapis.com/translate_a/t?anno=3&client=te&format=json&v=1.0&logld=v10", { q: value, sl: "auto", tl: 'ru', tc: "1" }, function(data) {alert(data[0])}, "json" ); Here, the q parameter is the original string; sl is the source language; tl - final language
In conclusion, I want to say
- Finding rare goods on TaoBao is not as difficult as it may seem at first glance.
- I would like to ask people not to abuse this free transfer option. My project is not monetized in any way, but it carries a very useful functionality, and if I somehow go to monetize, I will certainly use the paid Google API
- I am not a mediator, I do not provide intermediary services. I am a TaoBao buyer who decided to simplify my life
- If the service is ever monetized, it is only through cooperation with intermediaries and cargo companies on a separate page "intermediaries". All functionality will always remain free.
- The English version of the site is made by and large by means of the same Google Translate and does not shine with accuracy
- The section "TaoBao Tips" is not finished. I do not know whether to spend time on it. Maybe all this service is interesting only to me. There it was planned to describe the subtleties when choosing a seller and the use of search filters TaoBao
- If anyone is interested, then I never launched my online store. Moral: do not do business with friends
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/165623/
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