User Manual
How- to-use Auction Portal
● User Login and registration
1. On opening the website it asks for your user name and password.2. If you have an account provide the required details and Login .
3. If you do not have an account you need to register.4. Click on the link provided in order to register.5. To complete registration process you need to give details like
a. First name,Last name, webmail ID,password,phone no.,address ,DOB.6. Enter Valid details and Click ‘Register’.7. Once you are done with the registration process you can login to access the site.8. Once a User Logs in his userid is stored in a session variable (Session.id) which makes the system
further actions of the user easier to manage.9. The registration page appears as follows.
10. Once the user logs in the following page appears
This contains the auctions done by the user like the auctions won,items sold etc.
● Viewing and editing user profile information
1. To View your profile hover your mouse over the Profile menu. A drop down list appears2. Click on the view profile submenu to view your profile information.
3. To edit your profile click on the edit profile submenu.4. Change the required details and Click Edit button . The details will be changed accordingly.
5. The same submenu helps you to ‘Change your Password’.6. Enter the new password you want to opt for and click ‘Change Password’. Then password will be
updated accordingly.
● Viewing an ItemHere there two ways for an user to view an item
1. Hover your mouse over Items menu and click ‘Show all Items’ submenu.2. Here you can Filter the items by Active Auctions as well as Item Categories.3. After filtering the items by the way you want to filter click on the item link corresponding to the items
image to view it.4. The other way to view an item is by searching it .5. Click on the “Search for Items” submenu to start searching for an it.6. You can search an either by it’s Title or Description or both.
7. On entering the search type and query click on ‘search’ button which searches the item according tothe details given shows the best results possible.
8. Click on the item link corresponding to the items image to view it.
9. You can check the status of items you are selling in the trade pile page.
10. You can check the status of items you've either bid on or are interested in (added to watch list) bygoing to the watch list page.
Finally the item appears as below
● View Category1. This page helps the user to know the categories of items available and to know which category his item
belongs to .2. To view a category hover your mouse on ‘Category’ menu and click on ‘View Category’ submenu.
● Adding , Editing, Removing CategoryPrerequisite:
You should be the administrator of the website to do the above actions.The admin credentials arewebmail id: [email protected]: admin
1. To add a category hover on the category menu and click ‘Add Category’ Submenu.2. Enter the category name and category description and click ‘Add category’ to successfully add a
category. Make sure you enter valid details.
3. To edit a category hover on the category menu and click ‘Edit Category’ Submenu.4. Enter the category name you wish to edit.You can also the list of available categories in the Categories
box below.5. After entering the name of category click ‘View Description’ to view the old description.6. Now change the description as you like and click ‘Edit Category ’ to make the final changes Make
sure you enter valid details.Now the category has been successfully edited.
7. To remove a category hover on the category menu and click ‘Remove Category’ Submenu.8. Enter the category name you wish to edit.You can also the list of available categories in the Categories
box below.9. After entering the name of the category click Remove Category’ to successfully remove the category
from the database.
Adding an itemPrerequisites for adding an item
1. Item Name :Name of the item
2. Categories/Tags :Categories to add to the item.
3. Description :Describing the item
4. Image :An image of the item
5. Auction Price :The start price for the auction, that is the user has to start with minimumof this amount to auction for this item.
6. End of date auction :The date when you want the auction to end, that is the auction is alive until this date.
7. Time on that date :The exact time on that day you want the auction to end.
8. Buy now price :With this price the user can buy the item before the end date itself.
● To add the category, start typing the category name.The relevant categories will appear below.Checkthe categories you want to add to the item.
● Now you see the category appearing in the categories input field.● You can add multiple categories by clearing the search box and again typing in other category.● To remove the category before finally adding the item,again similarly search and uncheck the category
which removes that category from the categories input field.● Enter all valid details and click add an item , then look for the response message at the top right of the
window to see if there are any errors to reenter the details properly.
After Adding an Item● After adding an item , the item goes live on auction and people start to bid on it except the one who
put the item to auction.
● Whenever an item is added to our database the words present in the title and the description areindexed and added to our inverted index table which allows other people to search for it and get theresults quickly and efficiently.
Bidding an Item
Prerequisites for bidding on an item :● Price with which you wish to bid that item : Enter the price (or move the sliding bar) and click on
bid
Note:1. Now , when an item is live ( on auction) a registered user can search for all the live items and bid on
them.2. We click on an item to go to its page to bid on it.3. Keep a watch on the Notifications tab in the top right corner.If it glows green and says ‘New
Notifications’ it means some activity has just occurred in which you are interested in.Click on it to seethe details on your tray feed.
4. The current maximum price and leading user id will be dynamically updated on item page.5. Make sure you bid with an amount greater than the Current Maximum Price.6. Then , you will be leading in the bid.7. You can always bid the Buy Now Price to immediately win the auction and get the item.
Putting an expired item back to auction
Prerequisites ● You should be the owner of the item and nobody has bid and bought the item.
1. Click on the reauction button after the time expires, then you can edit the attributes of the item.(generally targeted for a better sale )
Brief Description Of Each Table: Table Name Purpose Auction Stores all auction related information Bid Stores all the bids made on a particular item Belongs This is a mapping between items and
categories Category Contains information about the various
categories Items Stores information related to a given item User User information is stored in this table Trade Feed All messages displayed to a user in his trade
feed are stored here Notifications This table contains timestamps used to
indicate notifications Titlewords Reverse indexed table of title words for the
search engine Descriptionwords Reverse indexed table of description words
for the search engine
Note: The tables: trade_feed, notifications, titlewords and descriptionwords are not a part of the ER diagram. These are additional tables used to improve user experience and are a part of the software.
Constraints : Primary Keys:
Attribute - Table a userid - User b item_id - Items c cat_id - Category d id - Trade_feed
Foreign Keys: Attribute - Table - References
a item_id - Auction - Items (items_id) b userid - Auction - User (userid) c userid - Bid - User (userid) d item_id - Bid - Items (items_id) e cat_id - Belongs - Category (cat_id) f item_id - Belongs - Items (items_id) g userid - Notification - User (userid) h userid - Trade_feed - User (userid)
Unique Indexes: Attribute - Table
a email_id - User b phone_number - User c cat_name - Category
Constraints: Attribute - Table - Type
a email_id - User - *@iitg.ernet.in or *@iitg.ac.in b DOB - User - Valid Date c min_cost - Auction - must be +ve. d buy_now_cost - Auction - greater than min_cost. e duration - Auction - must be +ve. f bid_count - Bid - must be +ve integer. g bid_price - Bid - greater than min_price. h bid_time - Bid - belong to (start_time,end_time). i user_id - Bid - Bid.user_id != Auction.user_id j current_max_price - Items - equal to max(bid_price). k ref_links - Items - valid URL
Search Engine: Indexing of an item’s information:
Whenever an item is added to our database the words present in the title and the description are indexed and added to our inverted index table.
Entries in this inverted index table corresponding to the descriptions are as follows :
Sample (1,2,5);(5,6,10);(10,1,30)
Meaning: The word “sample” is found in the descriptions of items 1,5 and 10.
Each tuple (x,y,z) has the following meaning: x - Item ID y - Number of occurrences of “sample” z - Total length of the description.
A similar table is constructed for the titles of each item.
Indexing algorithm:
The algorithm used during indexing the item’s description (indexing the title words is similar) is as follows:
1. Obtain the item’s description. 2. Remove all punctuation from the description. 3. Convert everything to lowercase. 4. Now, remove all stop words from this string. 5. Now, we are going to process the words that are left over. 6. For each word, obtain the corresponding stemmed word and add both the words to the inverted index table.
An important point to note is that the commit operation is performed after all words have been indexed or else the process would take time.
Ranking algorithm:
Whenever the user hits a search query, I remove punctuation, convert everything to lowercase and remove stop words from this query. The following algorithm is used :
For each word: 1. Obtained the stemmed version of the word. 2. Use the inverted index table to obtain the result for the actual word and stemmed word.
Assign points to each item for a given word using the following formula :
Score = base_points * stemming_factor * 2 * (1 - (0.5 _ )) base_points = 100 for title words = 95 for description words
stemming factor = length of stemmed word / length of actual word. This factor is taken to be 1 when the actual words are used.
After obtaining the final score, the list is sorted with the item with the highest score placed on top.
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