cbanack

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cbanack

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#1  Edited By cbanack

@mrpibb: Here are some more comic volumes that cannot be found if you search for them by their full name (i.e. more examples of the problem I posted here and here.)

The following series can be found in the as-you-type drop-down from the search bar, but not in the results if you press "enter" in the search bar, and not (critically for me) in the results returned by the Web API search resource:

  1. Batman and Robin (2011) (when searching for "Batman and Robin")
  2. Iron Man Annual (2014) (when searching for "Iron Man Annual")
  3. Morning Glories (2010) (when searching for "Morning Glories")
  4. Uncanny X-men (Marvel 2013) (when searching for "Uncanny X-men")
  5. also: X-men (Marvel 2013), Justice League (DC 2011), Wonder Woman (DC 2011), Harley Quinn (DC 2013) and Batman '66 (2013)

Judging from what my users are telling me, I'm sure there are many more examples.

Note that you can still find individual issue for these series, you just cannot find the volumes.

Could you please give me some idea about where this issue stands in your queue of bugs to address? I understand you guys are busy and I'm not trying to be pushy; I just want to have something to tell the users of MY software. As it is, I am getting bug reports on a daily basis about how my software "can't even find many recent comics". :(

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cbanack

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@pikahyper: Thanks for that explanation. Would it be helpful for me to continue to report these issues as we find them (the users of my software are good at finding this sort of thing), or should I just leave it for a while and give you guys a chance to get things sorted out?

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cbanack

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Here's some more search weirdness:

If you search for "Green Lantern Corps" using the website's search bar or the web API's "search" resource, you will not find the 2011 volume of that exact name. You WILL see that volume appear in the search bar's dropdown menu, just not in the search results (similar to the 1960 volume of Justice League of America).

If you search for "Corps", however, then the 2011 volume will appear in the search results (on the website and the web API).

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cbanack

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Hi guys (and @mrpibb). This seems to be the place to post newly discovered issues. We've run into some new search related weirdness, both with the search bar (top of the main webpage) and with the "search" resource in the web API. These issues seem to have cropped up around Friday the 14.

1) If you search for "Justice League of America", the 1960 volume appears in the search bar's dropdown, but NOT in the actual search results if you hit enter. It also does not appear at all in the results returned by the web API.

2) Currently if you search for "Zombie Tramp" using the search bar or the web API, you only get back one voume: this one. But when you searched for them a few days ago, you also got this, this, and this.

3) The web API has trouble if you mix AND with hyphenated words like "X-Factor" and "X-Men". e.g. If I search for the exact string "All AND New AND X AND Factor" or "x AND men AND legacy" using the website's search bar, it finds the expected volume no problem. But those queries don't find anything if I search for them with the web API. (I recently switched to putting AND between each search term when using the web API because it started implicitly OR'ing search terms together, and that was returning way too many results.)

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@jslack: Looks like this issue has been taken care of. The missing series can be found again. Thanks!

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Yes, I can verify: this issue appears to be fixed.

Thanks!

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cbanack

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A small problem has appeared in the ComicVine API over the last day or two:

1) The 'name' field in any 'issue' resource used to contain only the issue name, e.g. "Vendetta Part 1".

2) As of yesterday, it now contains the series name and issue number, e.g. "Cable and X-Force #18 - Vendetta Part 1".

That extra info is redundant, since it is already available elsewhere in the 'issue' resource. Any chance you could change it back to the way it was?

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There's a couple new issues I've noticed since yesterday. I posted the first one over here in the API section of the forum.

The second one has to do with finding comic series in the search bar or API 'search' resource. Basically, there's a bunch of comics that won't show up in any ComicVine search--but they are there, and they can be found and accessed using a Google search. I've listed a few examples here.

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#9  Edited By cbanack

Hi guys, here's a bug that seems to have cropped up yesterday sometime.

If you try to search for any of the following series using the search field on the main page, or the ComicVine API, you will not find them, even though they are all available on ComicVine and can be found using a Google Search:

Earth 2 Annual

Larfleeze

Inhumanity

Damian Son of Batman

Legends of Red Sonja

Night of the Living Deadpool

Earth 2 Annual

Forever Evil Argus

3 Guns

100 Bullets: Brother Lono

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#10  Edited By cbanack

Very recently (within the last few hours) my users have started reporting strange search results when using my software to query the ComicVine API. I dug into the issue a bit, and realized that the 'search' resource has changed. Now it "OR"s all search terms instead of "AND"ing them.

So if I search for the query string: "batman arkham unhinged", I used to get back three results (i.e. the three series that have all three of those words in their name.) As of today, when I query for that string, I now get over 700 results back (any series that contains ANY one or more of those three words in their name.)

I also discovered that I can go back to the original behaviour by explicitly specifying the word "AND" between each search term, i.e.:

"batman AND arkham AND unhinged"

My question to the ComicVine API team is this:

Are these changes accidental, or are they a permanent, intentional API change? I'd like to go ahead an update my software to use "AND" between search terms, that way my users are not bogging your servers down by making unintentionally huge search queries.

(@frobie might be interested in this)