Patent ID: 9536011
Date: 2017-01-03
CPC Classifications: G06F,G06Q

Claim:
1. A method for identifying availability of a content unit for a contiguous set of time units, comprising: receiving, by a data processing system including one or more processors, a request to reserve inventory of a content unit for a contiguous set of time units within a given date range, the request identifying the date range and a reservation size value for each time unit corresponding to a size of a portion of the time unit to reserve; generating, by the data processing system, from the request, a request string including a first plurality of characters, each character of the first plurality of characters corresponding to a position in the request string and having a character value, the position corresponding to a respective time unit of the contiguous set of time units and the character value corresponding to the reservation size value associated with the time unit to which the character corresponds; generating, from an availability schedule of the content unit, an inventory string including a second plurality of characters, each character of the second plurality of characters corresponding to a position in the inventory string and having a character value, the position in the inventory string corresponding to a respective time unit of the date range and the character value representing a size of an available portion of the time unit; determining a substring of the inventory string that includes an equal number of characters as the request string and each character of the substring having a character value that is equal to or greater than a character value of a corresponding character of the request string; and providing, for display, dates corresponding to the substring.