Racing Post- downloading Horse's race history

[Tabasena]

Hi

I am looking for an efficient way of downloading the page in the racing post that details a horse's entire racing history.

When you click on race cards, and select a race, if you then click on the horse's name it gives you the horse's entire racing history - it is that page that I want to download into excel- one page for each race with all the horse's in the race having their history on the one page.

The catch is I want to do it for every horse in every UK and Irish race-each day.

Currently I am copying and pasting- a time consuming task!

Does anyone have any ideas how this may be done more efficiently?

Any suggestions gratefully received.

Kind Regards.

 

[ronin]

Hi T Tabasena

There are plenty of more experienced members here who can probably advise you better.

Until then, my 2p worth is ...

If you really want to look at that much detailed information about every runner in every race then I don't imagine you'll continue for long doing it all yourself for every race every day. That's why RP is set up to allow you to drill down on the runners which actually interest you.

If you're doing some kind of automated query looking for certain traits amidst all that detail, then I think you really need a database not a spreadsheet.

There are expensive commercial databases which contain the information which you are currently copy/pasting. Raceform use essentially the same information as the Racing Post (but without a back-catalogue of pre-race RP ratings, if you use those). But only you can judge whether it's worth £50-100 per month to you for speed and convenience.

Alternatively, have you considered HorseRaceBase? I think it's still c. £10-15 per month? Many members here use HRB and seem happy with the service. Plenty of posts here about HRB and how to use it, including Chesham's HRB for Novices thread.

I think you can still get a free trial for HRB via this forum? If so, you could see if HRB can give you the data you want, before committing to pay anything.

If you really insist on downloading your information directly from the RP yourself then I guess you could learn to scrape if that interests you. @Ark Royal has posted some books about this and there are other tutorials on the internet. Or you could pay someone to scrape it for you. But be aware that maintaining the scraping tools is a pain when websites change layout, or new racetracks etc, need to be added.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.
atb
ronin

 

[Tabasena]

Hi T Tabasena

There are plenty of more experienced members here who can probably advise you better.

Until then, my 2p worth is ...

If you really want to look at that much detailed information about every runner in every race then I don't imagine you'll continue for long doing it all yourself for every race every day. That's why RP is set up to allow you to drill down on the runners which actually interest you.

If you're doing some kind of automated query looking for certain traits amidst all that detail, then I think you really need a database not a spreadsheet.

There are expensive commercial databases which contain the information which you are currently copy/pasting. Raceform use essentially the same information as the Racing Post (but without a back-catalogue of pre-race RP ratings, if you use those). But only you can judge whether it's worth £50-100 per month to you for speed and convenience.

Alternatively, have you considered HorseRaceBase? I think it's still c. £10-15 per month? Many members here use HRB and seem happy with the service. Plenty of posts here about HRB and how to use it, including Chesham's HRB for Novices thread.

I think you can still get a free trial for HRB via this forum? If so, you could see if HRB can give you the data you want, before committing to pay anything.

If you really insist on downloading your information directly from the RP yourself then I guess you could learn to scrape if that interests you. @Ark Royal has posted some books about this and there are other tutorials on the internet. Or you could pay someone to scrape it for you. But be aware that maintaining the scraping tools is a pain when websites change layout, or new racetracks etc, need to be added.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.
atb
ronin

Thanks Ronin for your detailed and considered reply- I am already a HRB member- I'll see if I can get the data I require from there.

Thanks again.

 

[Chesham]

Hi T Tabasena

If you click the Form Button on the HRB Race Card

If you click on the Blue Number Top left Corner i.e. 21 for More Beau, it will take you to that race. You can alter the 3rd last race to 4th, 5th, 6th or 7th last race