

Ask HN:  How would you implement a small-scale EBay? - aswanson

What would be your framework and approach?
======
keefe
It seems that payment processing is the biggest issue here. People are very
reluctant (rightfully so) to give up their financial information, so I think
it is a good idea to start with an existing service like PayPal or amazon FPS.
Next, I would select frameworks based on the development environment you're
most familiar with. I might choose java/spring/hibernate/struts2 or even raw
jdbc and servlets because I've spent so long in the java world, but many in
this community would probably lean towards RoR or similar. I think it's almost
always easier to go with what you know.

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olefoo
Implement some sort of secured cryptographic identity for members that is tied
to a phone number and a personal presence at a given place and time (stop by
any $foo to use our automated signup kiosk and receive your free picture ID
membership card) this would vastly reduce opportunities for fraud.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_...this would vastly reduce opportunities for fraud._

And vastly diminish your traffic, which in turn diminishes the universe of
potential buyers, which probably results in lower sale prices for goods on
your site relative to other sites. Particularly since even an "automated"
signup kiosk will increase the cost of a transaction in a way that needs to be
passed on in the form of higher fees.

I do like the idea, though. There might be some application where it's
worthwhile.

One trick is to see if you can leverage some sort of existing "automated
signup kiosk". If only you could, say, ask someone to authenticate by making a
transaction at one of several specific local ATM machines, and then query the
banks to make sure that transaction is made...

~~~
olefoo
If it could be tied into the DMV/Post Office/National ID card that would be
the best. As it is there are a number of retailers that implement something
similar; Costco for instance has a memberID card that has a lowrez photo on
the back.

Joining an existing ID system to a PKCS used with the website would be
relatively straightforward.

Your point about it reducing the universe of available buyers is true up to a
point the variable there is the value of the goods being traded. Confirmed
trustworthy identities aren't important if you're selling relatively low value
goods, but if you're buying and selling cars, houses or industrial goods it
suddenly becomes much more attractive to reduce the pool of buyers to those to
on whom some due diligence has already been performed. As always; risk carries
a premium.

The basic problem of course is that our current monetary system is not well
suited to todays internet.

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ericb
I'd start by looking for an open source project that does what I need and has
a permissive license, then modify that.

If I was starting from scratch, I'd probably use rails, and the activescaffold
plugin.

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babul
For a start I would actually try and do something different from eBay
initially just to offer USP/differentiation.

However, assuming you want to create an eBay for use in your own
site/society/community and competing with eBay is a non-issue, I would do it
in the tools that allow building as easily and quickly as possible.

I would use python/django because of simplicity in code style and they are
good opensource frameworks for building web apps that incorporate many good
paradigms. Others may prefer what is in thier skillset e.g. RoR/.NET/PHP, but
that is preference... the auctomatic guys _started_ building in common lisp.

My approach would be KISS, working on the core essence i.e. an auctioning
engine, and building iteratively there upon. I would also initially start by
looking at what is broken in eBay and what people generally complain about and
try to incorporate the learning into my roadmap but still focusing on the core
competencies first.

~~~
aswanson
_assuming you want to create an eBay for use in your own
site/society/community and competing with eBay is a non-issue_

Correct. This is just a small, personal project.

~~~
babul
I think I can do a good attempt at this over a weekend. Anyone fancy doing a
weekend fun project together?

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aneesh
More importantly, why do you want to create a small EBay? EBay works _because_
of it's size & scale.

The hardest part of this would be handling the actual payments. The rest of it
can be done with whatever you like best.

Edit: After I wrote this, I realize it's pretty similar to Keefe's
recommenation

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webwright
I would go to hotscripts.com or drupal.org and see if there is already
something pretty close.

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Zak
I did something very similar a couple years ago. Details are covered by an
NDA, but the software stack consisted of SBCL, TBNL (now Hunchentoot), CLSQL,
CL-WHO, PostgeSQL and a few other random libraries. The archetecture was
informally MVC.

