Maintaining polldata.json

What is polldata.json?

Your polldata.json located at ~/tf2autobot/files/steam_login_name/ stores all the trades your bot has made. Read more about it here.

Over time this file will grow bigger and slow down your bot. You will want to maintain your polldata.json regularly. Depending on how many trades your bot makes this could be done weekly or monthly.

You are faced with two options. If you care about your !stats command being correct you will want to follow option 2, else you can follow option 1.

Option 1: Deleting polldata.json

The easiest method to keep your bot being fast is to simply shut down your bot. If you don’t remember how, check Running your bot on Windows or Running your bot on Linux.

Once your bot is offline you can navigate to ~/tf2autobot/files/steam_login_name/ and delete your polldata.json.

Keep in mind this will make the output of the !stats command incorrect.

Option 2: Editing your options.json

There are two properties in your options.json file that you can edit to keep track of your trade statistics.

They are called statistics.lastTotalTrades and statistics.startingTimeInUnix.

Before you begin, send !stats to your bot and write down the total amount of trades made. You will be using this number for statistics.lastTotalTrades.

After that, shut down your bot. Once your bot is offline transfer your polldata.json to another location outside of your tf2autobot installation folder. Once done you can open up your transferred polldata.json.

In this file you will search for the first offerData ID. And then use that offerData ID to find the UNIX time. Once you find the UNIX time you can input it into statistics.startingTimeInUnix. If you would like a visual explanation you can check out this gif image.

Now that you have changed both statistics.lastTotalTrades and statistics.startingTimeInUnix and you have taken a backup of your polldata.json you can delete the polldata.json located at ~/tf2autobot/files/steam_login_name/.

Last thing you need to do is restart your bot (check Running your bot on Windows or Running your bot on Linux. if you don’t remember how) and enjoy it being lightning fast again.