Auctions A Production Real-Time Auctions System

The Antique House

Together with my colleague, Grzegorz Bukat from Warsaw, Poland, I was asked to build a real-time auction system for the Antique House of Michal Niemczyk.

The Real-Time Auction

The auction is carried by an auctioneer in a physical brick and mortar hall. An auction includes many items and runs for close to 10 hours. The audience present in the hall can bid for items.

Internet Users

Users of the web site participate in the auction by posting bids like the audience in the hall.

The auction hall is streamed (video and audio) to Internet users so they get a real feeling of the excitement of the auction.

Intelligent Agents

Days before the auction, clients can give offers to items. The offer states the maximum price a client is willing to pay for an item. An intelligent agent acts on behalf of such a client, successively bidding on his/her behalf as the auction proceeds, acting like a real person present in the hall.

The Real-Time Auction System

The system was built using the Laravel PHP framework. To implement the real-time aspect we used Node.js with Socket.io. This real-time part is based on my previous article on Real-Time Auctions with Node.js.

The front-end used jQuery for dynamic updates of web pages. We used Bootstrap to make the web site responsive. As the web site is responsive, users can use the web site on mobiles and tablets.

Our Experience

Four auctions in a row. The antique house was pleased, and continue to ask for additional features.

See a You Tube movie showing a screencast of the auction: