Amazon is a service known for convenience and efficiency. However, it is often frustrating to buy a product on Amazon only to find out that another site was selling it for less, or that the item was sold at a discount shortly after.

Recently, I gained skills related to serverless functions through BitProject, and found the PERFECT way to save myself lots money and frustration! Through serverless computing, automating the task of observing a product's price becomes a fun and affordable challenge.

Thats how I started developing PriceScraper, a web app that takes in an Amazon link and some basic information and sends a message if an item fluctuates in price.#

About me#

My name is Fifi Teklemedhin (she/her), and I am a rising senior at West High School in Salt Lake City. I enjoy Computer programming, robotics, cheerleading, and participating in HOSA! Advocacy for equitable access to CS and humanitarian technologies are two of my interests.

Technologies & More#

The program interface is a basic form with fields for:#

A link to a product, a phone number, the number of days the user wants to receive notifications, and a baseline discount percentage for the item

What did I use?#

Azure Function HTTP Trigger:#

The website triggers an Azure Function HTTP trigger, which inputs the user input and scraped data into a SQL database. After learning so much about using APIs, HTTP Triggers were a great way to build one myself.

Azure Timer Trigger:#

Checks the price of the item every day, updates the database, and sends a text message to the user under three conditions. Timer Triggers provide an easy solution if you need to run your code on a set interval, and helped me understand "triggers" in serverless better.

Twilio API:#

The user is sent a text message if an item's price increases from the time the user submits the form, the price decreases to the desired discount value, or the notification period is reached. Through Twilio, I was able to learn how to integrate SMS into my projects to communicate with users.

SQL Database:#

The database communicates with the Timer Trigger to store data. The data stored in the database is then queried to evaluate when to send alerts to the user. In almost any project, storing data is always key to making it functional; learning SQL helped immensely.

Thoughts & what's next...#

Through the power of Azure Functions, PriceScraper is able to help you save plenty of money and frustration when it comes to shopping on Amazon. Take a look at my Github Repository for the source code!

Special Thanks:#

I would also like to thank BitProject and Microsoft, who inspired me to create this project! I am grateful to have learned about cloud computing and Azure in such a fun and engaging way.