Board and Card Games

3:19 PM

Waxing Moon

What's up with this card carg? I type [mtg:Waxing Moon] and it can't find the card. And yet here it is: gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/…

I'm asking because this card is tagged in a recent question, and currently broken

Malco

it has to do with how the auto card link works, there is another card with waxing moon in it so the auto link breaks

it is expecting one result and gets two so it decides to just die

gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/…

search result for Waxing moon: gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/…

Also thanks for reminding me to fix that link

doppelgreener

@Rainbolt I'm considering asking the site to switch over to Scryfall for its linking... it turns out, the reason we can't figure out a consistent functional API call to make to Gatherer, is probably because there isn't one -- it's not that we're doing something wrong, it's that Gatherer wasn't set up for this. WotC has a severely under-resourced IT department.

Malco

3:37 PM

@doppelgreener Make a Meta post, I would back it

Having to double check links in all the answers/questions is a huge pain, espcially since new cards coming out can break old links because of the 2 results bug

Rainbolt

3:50 PM

Are we actually consuming an "API" in the sense that most programmers use the term? I thought we were just constructing URLs to actual pages and displaying them in a window.

doppelgreener

@Rainbolt Sort of yes, sort of no! From a web development perspective, a URL is a form of API; but Gatherer was definitely not developed to be an API.

(I mean, not always -- but when it's a reliable URL to which we can give information and get specific results, we can treat it well enough like an API.)

Rainbolt

I see. I'm really curious about why I can't get a specific result for Waxing Moon

I don't see anything about that card name that strikes me as unusual

For comparison, this does not work: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=%2b%5bWaxing%20Moon%‌5d

And this does work: filler filler http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=%2b%5bLightning%20Str‌ike%5d

(Why Stack Exchange does not allow for multiline formatting in chat is beyond me.)

JonTheMon

shift+enter doesn't give a new line?

Two shift+enters

Rainbolt

It does, but you lose formatting. See?
` Not formatted like code `

Luna Crescente

JonTheMon

Oh, that'

Rainbolt

4:01 PM

Descarga de rayos

Okay, one works in English and the other doesn't. Neither work in Spanish.

I don't know what the point of that experiment was lol

Malco

usually you can see where it is tripping up if you past the broken text directly into gatherers search bar

Rainbolt

Paste what broken text? If I paste the URL into the search bar, it balks. If I paste the card's name into the search bar, it breaks the query into two parts (contains searchTermA and contains searchTermB) which is not what we want to do, because it causes problems like Sun Titan bringing back Sundering Titan as a possible match.

Malco

ahh, I think that might be part of the issue

the gatherer breaking search terms up not the URL bit

Rainbolt

It won't break them up anymore because whomever built our plug-in found a way to make it not do that

Malco

What ever fix was added to fix the Sun Titan / Sundering Titan issue might be causing the Waxing Moon / Cult of the Waxing Moon problem

making it search "Sun Titan" vs "Sun" + "Titan" would fix finding "Sun"dering "Titan". but searching "Waxing Moon" would give two results when it can only display one

ie it would find "Waxing Moon" and Cult of the "Waxing Moon"

Jace

that works fine though.... hrrm

Jace,

Rainbolt

4:12 PM

I think I understand, and I can't seem to find a creative way to do an exact card name search

Malco

the living

ok that one is doing it

it seems to search fine if the terms are in the front of the card, but break if it is in the middle

the living should return two results: gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/…

Rainbolt

We could at least reduce the impact by putting the name in square brackets, like so:
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&name=+[%22Waxing%20Moon%22]

ie: [Waxing Moon]

Nope

still broke

4:15 PM

I don't mean search the gatherer for the name in square brackets

But if you want to do it that way, put the card name in quotes "Waxing Moon"

Anyway, I'm on board with using another provider if they have a more clearly defined way to search for a card with a specific name, and if the devs feel like developing it

murgatroid99

Scryfall will work with a search for !"Card Name"

Rainbolt

Just as a silly exercise to see if it's possible to bend the Gatherer to do our bidding, I thought of a way to avoid *some* of the extraneous matches. We could change our query to say:
Name contains "Waxing Moon"
Name does not contain "b"
Name does not contain "c"
Name does not contain "d"
Name does not contain "e"
...
<every other letter that isn't part of Waxing Moon>

But a) that would be ridiculous to implement and b) it wouldn't cover cards like "A Waxing Moon" or "Waxing Moon Man" because they use the same letters.

doppelgreener

@Rainbolt Max, Waxing Moon Man

Malco

4:32 PM

@doppelgreener his transform side is "Mad Max of the Waning Moon"

he just really likes the moon and goes a bit crazy when it starts to go away

doppelgreener

@Malco his ultimate planeswalker ability is to break the spirit of the developer trying to get a gatherer-compatible search working

Malco

hmmm pretty powerful, his flip must be a minus 8 loyalty ability before he can use that ultimate ability

Malco

4:59 PM

Nice Q @doppelgreener and good picks for some pretty powerful cards to combine together

doppelgreener

5:10 PM

@Malco yeah. :D thanks, that answer was more effective than i thought i was going to get!

Rainbolt

Phage the Untouchable

doppelgreener

@Rainbolt @_@!!!???!?!??!

WHY WOULD THAT BREAK

murgatroid99

5:28 PM

There's a vanguard avatar with the same name

doppelgreener

D:

murgatroid99

Sep 9 '16 at 23:45, by murgatroid99

@diego I figured it out: the way we do card search has been broken for every card with the exact same name as a Vanguard avatar

doppelgreener

What about Waxing Moon though..?

murgatroid99

Yeah, I have no idea what's going on with that

Rainbolt

5:56 PM

Cult of the Waxing Moon (same problem, but not an avatar)

murgatroid99

I saw that. The weird thing is that in most similar cases it would just pop up a search with both cards as a result

Look at Pariah for example

doppelgreener

I had a theory it was because it was both an exact card name and a subset of another card's name, but "Recall" matches those criteria and its search is OK

Rainbolt

an exact card name and a subset of another card's name and multiple words maybe?

murgatroid99

@doppelgreener So does Pariah

@Rainbolt Maybe. Off hand I can't think of any other cards that match those criteria

Rainbolt

Any vanguard avatar card, Waxing Moon

murgatroid99

6:06 PM

Right. We have those observations, and a hypothesis. But I can't think of any other cards to test it with

What about Infernal Spawn of Evil

Here's an interesting one Circle of Protection: Art

Nicol Bolas

But, since that circle of protection works fine, Sliver Hive should be fine too (edit: but it's not)

Guardian Angel?

Telim'Tor?

I guess with the apostrophe instead of a space, it's not two words

Bee Sting, Raven's Run, Lay Bare, Lone Wolf, Greven il-Vec, Sliver Queen, Goblin Spy, Ghazbán Ogre

OK, that's pretty good data to support that hypothesis. Circle of Protection: Art looks like an outlier

What about Mind Sculpt

Border Guard? Magical Hack? Ghitu Fire? Witch Hunt? Treasure Hunt?

OK, it looks like in every case, if a card name is multiple words and a substring of another card name, our search breaks

The single exception is Circle of Protection: Art

Malco

6:28 PM

There might be a "fix" written in that treats words that start a card differently

see Jace,

not a complete card name, but "Jace," shows up in multiple cards

murgatroid99

Jace is one word, and not a card name

Malco

also see how the living breaks

though it should show two cards

I included the comma after Jace

murgatroid99

@Malco OK, that's still not relevant to the set of cards we're looking at

doppelgreener

@Malco well there's no card that's actually called "the living"

murgatroid99

But still, maybe it breaks on any subsequence of two or more words that appears on two or more cards

Malco

6:31 PM

no but I believe the auto card is searching the same way

look at the searches it is actually running

Border Guard is searching for "Border+Guard" not "Border Guard"

it is adding a plus into the search terms for some reason

murgatroid99

"+" is a common substitution for a space in URLs

Malco

yes but it is putting the plus into the card name explicitly

ie "Border+Guard" instead of "Border Guard" or "Border"+"Guard"

murgatroid99

Actually, that's not even in the URL. That's just how gatherer is displaying it

You have to keep in mind that almost all multi-word card links work just fine. It just seems to be this specific subset that's breaking

Malco

I'm just saying that this is the search that Auto-card is running:

murgatroid99

I understand that. I can see it too. What is your point?

Malco

6:36 PM

when it should be running this:

or this:

doppelgreener

Consider that Lightning+Bolt works fine

Malco

doppelgreener

This isn't a problem with us calling it incorrectly, it's gatherer has a garbage inconsistent search that regularly fails to match exact card names

murgatroid99

A while ago, we tried a variety of different ways of doing the gatherer search, and they all broke on different test cases

The one we currently use is the one that worked. We decided on it well before we ever knew about this substring issue

I think that searching for each word separately just ended up with too many search results for too many otherwise unique card names

Malco

is the auto card function documented anywhere?

murgatroid99

6:46 PM

You mean the usage or the functionality?

Malco

functionality

murgatroid99

The closest is probably this:

8

Q: Can the Magic card auto link feature be improved?

Some Cards Generate Multiple Results If the entire name is contained within the name of another card, then linking the former card will return a result with both cards. An example can be seen with Circle of Protection: Art, which returns a list of both the specified card, as well as Circle of P...

But it's pretty easy to see for yourself what it does

Malco

I can't tell for sure but it looks like it is adding preceding "+" to the search terms

I was hoping to have a look at the actual functions to see how it works

murgatroid99

It's definitely just Card Name -> +[Card Name], then that's dumped into the query parameter

Malco

it is being encoded though

murgatroid99

6:49 PM

It's just percent encoding

Malco

I wonder if there is a bug on gathers end on parsing that though

murgatroid99

They're parsing it just fine

Malco

as their search URLs don't seem to use percent encoding

murgatroid99

If you replace the percent encoded characters with non-encoded characters in the URL, you can see that you get exactly the same outcome

Malco

nvm still broken when I swap it out

ya sorry

murgatroid99

6:54 PM

You can see in that question I linked that we used to use actual autocard links, but they don't handle apostrophes correctly, which was the main reason we changed it

Malco

I do see that while +[Border%20Guard] searches for "Border+Guard" and is broken, +["Border%20Guard"] searches for "Border Guard" and works

I wonder what adding "double quotes" would break

murgatroid99

Look at the test cases in that question

Malco

probably "Ach! Hans, Run!"

murgatroid99

Also Kongming, "Sleeping Dragon"

Malco

also note that some of the "fixed" cards in this answer don't actually work

2

A: Can the Magic card auto link feature be improved?

A few more cards with unusual characters in their names, mostly from Unglued / Unhinged, just for testing to see if these sissues would be fixed by linking directly to http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Card+Name. These work fine already (and also with the fix): "Ach! Han...

murgatroid99

7:03 PM

They all look fine to me

Malco

Chicken A la king is broken

as is Junun Efreet

murgatroid99

Oh. Those were in the "already working" list, not the "fixed" list

Malco

And Ghazban Ogress

Seems to be some aversion to accented letters perhaps....

murgatroid99

Actually, I think they were talking about their own suggested fix, which is different from what the links actually point to

Still, it's good to know that our current solution doesn't work for certain accented letters

Malco

But circling back to @doppelgreener original message. I would be good with swapping the search functionality with Scryfall if possible. It doesn't seem to have anything missing that Gatherer has, and would be well worth the swap if it fixes all the auto linking headaches.

murgatroid99

7:14 PM

They will have to do some special casing to handle quotes, but I think it will be fine

Cards with apostrophes would need to be surrounded with quotation marks, and cards with quotation marks need to be surrounded with apostrophes

doppelgreener

10:20 PM

Phage the Untouchable, test

Barrin, test

Birds of Paradise, test

Chronatog test

murgatroid99

That matches our working hypothesis

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