Brickstore and Brickficiency

[gorbasho]

As it seems like there are some members new to the part buying aspect of Bricklink, I thought I'd share some information on programs that can make it easier. Bricklink is a great thing to have, but using it at first feels like a time machine to 15 years ago and shows you just how bad online shopping can be on an outdated website design. That said, two programs that can relieve some of the pain are Brickstore and Brickficiency.

 

Brickstore essentially lets you manage the Bricklink database in a more powerful and easier to use way. Imagine the Bricklink parts/sets catalog combined with Excel. I primarily use it to check prices and inventory levels of parts and sets, to create wanted lists for missing parts I need or sets I'm trying to build from scratch, and to verify inventory of a Bricklink order or a used set I bought. It has the ability to import set inventories, import Bricklink orders, export Bricklink wanted lists, etc which make it much faster to use than the Bricklink website.

 

Brickficiency is a program that takes a Bricklink wanted list or Brickstore .bsx file and scans Bricklink to find the cheapest combination of 2-5 stores to purchase the parts from. This makes it very easy to find where to purchase a list of parts from, rather than having to manually and tediously use the store list on the Bricklink Wanted list page.

 

Hopefully this is helpful to anyone who has not heard of these programs, and if you already have, you probably know how useful they are . If it would be helpful I can write some short tips and guides on using these programs to accomplish certain tasks such as verifying completeness of a used set, identifying a used set based on a few bricks, Bricklinking a complete set from scratch, etc, or even just basic Bricklink tips and info, just let me know

[endtalk]

Thanks for this .  Just getting into this and your tips are very helpful.

[justafrog]

Gorbasho, the Macks might be interested in a blog article or two on these. I muddle along with Bricklink's functionality with the fond but quite possibly batty hope that I'll be able to hold out till BL3.0     but I know lots of folks like the support sites/functions you mentioned.

[odysea11]

Very interesting! Appreciate the tips! That will surely help with the painfully drawn out process of searching for multiple pieces in multiple stores.

[matt1147]

I also recommend a blog article - you basically already have the info in your post above. Thanks so much!!

[gorbasho]

Thanks everyone for the comments, I'll start working on a blog article. If anyone would like information on specific topics regarding general purchasing on Bricklink and usage of external programs, please post and I'll try and include them in the article.

[soiram]

Thanks for that. BL is my main source of buying Lego and this really helps.

Sent from my iPhone using Brickpicker

[soiram]

Thanks everyone for the comments, I'll start working on a blog article. If anyone would like information on specific topics regarding general purchasing on Bricklink and usage of external programs, please post and I'll try and include them in the article.

A couple of issues to consider if possible:

Brickstore management of BL wanted lists (could not find how to do it)

Price management: for example could someone choose to include data only from EU sales? I seem to remember that this filter exists when creating an alert in wanted lists.

Thanks again!

Sent from my iPad using Brickpicker

[knarrff]

Brickficiency is a program that takes a Bricklink wanted list or Brickstore .bsx file and scans Bricklink to find the cheapest combination of 2-5 stores to purchase the parts from. This makes it very easy to find where to purchase a list of parts from, rather than having to manually and tediously use the store list on the Bricklink Wanted list page.

This is what I am currently looking for. It is really surprising to see that Bricklink itself does not offer this. Anyway: I can only find the executable for Brickficiency (an "exe"), but I would need the source (all Linux here). Does anyone have either an idea how to get the source (was looking around myself), or has already a similar program that also runs on Linux? Otherwise I will have to end up writing my own, but I would like to avoid that exercise.

[knarrff]

To answer my own question, and for everyone that might be interested too: there is a small tool called "bltools" (http://code.google.com/p/bltools/) that can take a blinklink xml file (exported from a wanted list, I currently do that via a browser plugin), download store information about each part, and then using some pretty nifty optimizing techniques to find an optimum way to buy this set of bricks from the available stores (making some assumptions about the shipping cost). The result is an html page with corresponding links to blicklink and XML ready to be imported to Bricklink again, one for each store. Nice.

[roto22]

To answer my own question, and for everyone that might be interested too: there is a small tool called "bltools" (http://code.google.com/p/bltools/) that can take a blinklink xml file (exported from a wanted list, I currently do that via a browser plugin), download store information about each part, and then using some pretty nifty optimizing techniques to find an optimum way to buy this set of bricks from the available stores (making some assumptions about the shipping cost). The result is an html page with corresponding links to blicklink and XML ready to be imported to Bricklink again, one for each store. Nice.

 

Cool find! Sounds very similar to what Brickficiency does. I might have to compare the two and see what works better...

[jaisonline]

gorbasho,

 

AWESOME THREAD. i'll give it a try as i'm a "super power" bricklink user. ha

 

let me know if you need help writing or gathering info.

[Super Goblin]

Am i doing something wrong?  When I log onto my bricklink account on brickficiency it won't pull up my wanted list.  It states that I have zero lots.

[grackleflint]

For people interested in Brickstore, they really should be using Brickstock

 

http://brickstock.patrickbrans.com/

 

Brickstore's development has stopped and it is increasingly incompatible with Bricklink. The current developer of Brickstock has apparently taken up the updating of the Brickstore code so it is essentially the same program, just updated to remain compatible with Bricklink. He renamed it to avoid issues.

[gorbasho]

For people interested in Brickstore, they really should be using Brickstock

 

http://brickstock.patrickbrans.com/

 

Brickstore's development has stopped and it is increasingly incompatible with Bricklink. The current developer of Brickstock has apparently taken up the updating of the Brickstore code so it is essentially the same program, just updated to remain compatible with Bricklink. He renamed it to avoid issues.

 

Thanks for sharing, was not aware of Brickstock. Can you elaborate on what incompatibilities Brickstore has with Bricklink, and what benefits/differences there are with Brickstock?

[grackleflint]

The biggest showstopper for new users is that Brickstore can no longer download the BrickLink database. That and the Import Shopping Cart function doesn't work are the ones that I have read about in the forums.

 

Brickstock looks and functions exactly the same as Brickstore because the current maintainer just took the Brickstore code (it's open source) and has been fixing it so it can continue working. With Bricklink 2.0 supposedly coming very soon, it might break Brickstock also if there are major changes to the BrickLink API.

[DoNotInsertIntoMouth]

Not bad - I was wondering if there was anything like this. I keep hearing about Bricklink 3.0 but its starting to feel like the upgrade of our support system at work that has supposedly been right around the corner for 5 years now. lol.