Methods and apparatus for performing recurring electronic shelf label transactions

Abstract

An electronic price label (ESL) system for performing recurring ESL transactions which occur in a periodic fashion. In one aspect, an ESL manager records and schedules messages to the ESL. When a transaction request directed to an ESL is created or issued by a client application, multiple pieces of information may be provided by that client to the ESL manager, indicating what action is to be taken. To allow for the scheduling of recurring transactions, recurrence information for the transaction may also be specified by the client application. The recurrence information may include a start date and time, and a recurrence period. After the transaction has been processed, the ESL manager looks at the recurrence period and if the recurrence period is a non-zero value, the ESL manager adds the recurrence period to the start date and time to generate a new start date and time. The ESL manager then generates a new transaction and stores this new transaction in a transaction log table to be processed at the future appropriate time. This new transaction is essentially identical to the old, with the exception of the incremented a start date and time, and unique transaction identifier.