<aside> 💡 The following tutorial assumes that you have some basic knowledge of creating files, editing them and uploading them via FTP.
</aside>
Although trading has always been the name of the game, searching for the cards that you need can be a terribly tedious process. By the time that you've discovered a member has 46 cards you need for your collecting/keeping, you've already spent 20 minutes in their trade post. Time to spend another 20 minutes figuring out which cards you can send them in return... And now you're wondering if they accept randoms. Because you might die of old age before this trade is through.
Most users will have a search bar in their trade post, where you can enter a single entry to search for. This certainly helps save time, but that script has not been updated since 2011. Thank you Daggles, for all you've done for us, but it's time to move on. It's 2020, and the purpose of this post is to encourage each of you to swap out your current card search script from the single-entry-search, to a multi-card-search.
And if you are someone who currently doesn't have a card search at all, I am here to tell you that sending you trades has been a pain in the ass. I love you, but let's fix that today.
<aside> ⛔ WARNING:
Depending on the amount of cards in someone's trade post, and how many things you're searching for, you may experience a slow search time.
I searched my trade post (which has about 1900 cards) for 700 items at once and it took about 30 seconds for the results to return to me.
</aside>
<aside> 💡 The following tutorial assumes that you have some basic knowledge of creating files, editing them and uploading them via FTP. It also assumes that you understand how to add a new section to your Idolise page/file. I will not be writing a tutorial on that at this time.
</aside>
Now that have this multi-search functionality, and other members are starting to roll it out as well, why not create a that lists all of the cards you need? This mod is very similar to the to the show_needed mode by Dite, but it has a few modifications to it that list out each needed card in a proper comma separated list.
<aside> ⛔ WARNING:
Depending on the amount of cards in your collecting/keeping categories, this new page may take a moment to load each time that you view it.
I currently have 63 collecting decks, and 33 decks in keeping (202 cards). My needed page takes about 21 seconds to load.
</aside>
Create your needed page with whatever method you normally use for a new page.
To show your collecting decks, use the following code:
<?php show_needed_list( 'idolise', 'collecting', '1', '1'); ?>
To show all other categories:
<?php show_needed_list( 'idolise', 'keeping', '20', '1'); ?>
<aside> ❗ 'idolise' should equal the name of your TCG 'keeping' should equal the name of your category in ETCG '20' should equal the how many cards are in the decks in your category
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