IBEX-Scraper-API

A lightweight ASP.NET Core Web API that automatically scrapes day-ahead electricity prices from IBEX (Independent Bulgarian Energy Exchange) and stores them in a remote SQL Server database for use by external applications.

Live API: link (HTTP only – free hosting plan limitation)

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⚡ Purpose

This API was built to decouple IBEX access from dependent systems by providing a secure, reliable, and filterable data backend.

It powers apps like SunNext by allowing them to:

• Access daily price data without scraping IBEX directly
• Query historical electricity prices by date/hour
• Build custom dashboards and energy trading strategies

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📊 What It Does

• Scrapes IBEX Day Ahead prices for the next day

• Extracts hourly energy prices (BGN/MWh)

• Saves results into a MarketPrices table with:

  • Date (format: dd/MM/yyyy)
  • Hour (1–24 using EET/EEST timezone)
  • PricePerMWh (BGN/MWh)

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🕒 Scheduling

• Prices are updated daily after 14:00 BG time (UTC+3) when IBEX publishes the next day’s market prices.

• Data scraping is triggered by calling:

  POST /api/Scrape/scrape-and-save
  

• Only stores new data (prevents duplicate entries for the same date/hour)

• Scheduler: Configured using cron-job.org to automatically call the above endpoint every day at 14:00 EEST.

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🧱 Tech Stack

• Backend: ASP.NET Core Web API (.NET 8)
• Scraper: AngleSharp
• Database: MS SQL (Somee.com hosting)
• Deployment: FTP to Somee.com (Free Hosting Plan, HTTP-only)
• Scheduler: cron-job.org external HTTP request trigger

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🌐 Deployment Notes (Somee Free Plan)

• Hosted on Somee.com free plan
• HTTP only – no HTTPS due to free hosting limitations
• API runs at: http://ibex-scraper.somee.com
• Connection string stored in appsettings.Production.json on the server
• Deployment via FTP to /www.ibex-scraper.somee.com

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📁 Project Structure

IBEX-Scraper-API/
├── Controllers/
│   └── ScrapeController.cs
├── Services/
│   └── IbexScraper/
│       ├── IbexScraperService.cs
│       └── IIbexScraperService.cs
├── Data/
│   ├── Migrations/
│   ├── Models/
│   │   └── MarketPrice.cs
│   ├── AppDbContext.cs
│   └── AppDbContextFactory.cs
└── Program.cs