FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - [SHUT DOWN] Unofficial Advanced AC Reward Search Tool (cowtool)
Old May 14, 2022 | 12:10 pm
  #332  
canadiancow
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Originally Posted by jugaadkabaap
Tagging on to this. Is there any thought on making it Open-source where in which others could pitch in? I am fairly sure many will be open to self host / co-host for others (and swap the Amadeus api key (for PNR lookup) with their own) thereby sharing the load.
No, for various reasons I can't get into here.

Edit:
Actually, I can discuss one of the reasons. Querying an airline's inventory puts strain on that airline's system. That is why AC can "never" (barring some massive *A wide upgrade) offer a good 30 day calendar.

I have various limiters in place to slow things down. My system can handle "infinite" searches, but the airlines cannot.

The reason I'm displaying "credits" now are:
1. I'm actually tracking it now in a way that allows me to display it
2. For users who care, maybe they'll think about their usage (a lot of people have told me they run search A, then B, then forget what was in A, so run it again, etc.)
3. For users who don't care, and are clearly scraping me (which is why the auth system was implemented in the first place), and there have been a few, I can cut them off.

Let's say I open sourced this, and you self-hosted it. Great, that saves me some money.

But if it means you're now doing an hourly search for every route that operates F, on every date in the schedule, how long before EY/LH/NH/TG/etc. complain, and "public" access is cut off?

My goal, from the start, was to build something that the airlines would let survive. I do not trust others to have that same goal.

Last edited by canadiancow; May 14, 2022 at 12:29 pm
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