Racing Post Race_id

[thatsdunnit]

Is there a quick way of accessing one day's race_ids?

Sporting Life simply uses course and time in its URLs but RP seems to insist on race_id.

I just want to drag down the RP betting forecast for all races for the day but there seems no way of accessing one race on RP via a URL without quoting the race_id - unless some kind person knows how to access a race on RP using the date, course_id and time (rather than race_id) in the URL.

Can anyone help please because I am stuck!

[KevinTHFC]

I go to http://www.racingpost.co.uk/horses/r..._date=2008-8-2 every day, changing the date each day and then strip out all the links. Throw away the links to the horses form and keep the links to the race cards. Process the links to the racecards by throwing away any duplicates. You are then left with the days race_ids.

Kevin

[thatsdunnit]

Many thanks for your help Kevin - much appreciated.
Are you screenscraping to do this?
I did it in Excel and it works well, but I end up with NMK 2.25.
Do you know the URL syntax to access the Newmarket 2.25 race page
using those codes, rather than the official race_id of say 462278
Thanks again.
John

[KevinTHFC]

I am using vba with excel.
I don't think you can get the RP cards without the id's. You can however get the RP F/C prices from here http://www.racingpost.co.uk/c4/cards...flag=1&cards=1 This gives the cards for each course on one page

Kevin

[Dices]

You can use Kevins suggestion or from RP home page download todays meetings-links ,delete those that you dont want , from the remaining links-new pages download the urls for idividual races and extract the race ids.
Race id is neccessery from what i can see.

[thatsdunnit]

Many thanks Kevin and Dices
I'll give both suggestions a go tomorrow. It is so frustrating because all I want to do is to download the RP forecasts for the day automatically into Excel but RP make it so cumbersome without the race_ids!!
John