MTG Gatherer Downloader

[dairou]

Great app, thanks!

However i have a problem... I downloaded all M10 images in spanish and it worked perfectly. Then I tried with M11 and got only the backs of the cards. See image please:
. The only thing i did different was use the .reg file in an attempt to stop the script warnings.

Any ideas?

[woogerboy21]

Great app, thanks!

However i have a problem... I downloaded all M10 images in spanish and it worked perfectly. Then I tried with M11 and got only the backs of the cards. See image please:
. The only thing i did different was use the .reg file in an attempt to stop the script warnings.

Any ideas?

Thats due to the gatherer not containing the images for that language. To verify if images in a specific language are available goto the gatherer. Use the search capability to locate a card from the set you are pulling. Click on the card to view the card details. Click the "languages" tab in the card details pane. Then click the name of the card in the language you are trying to pull. This will show you the card details (along with image) of that card in the the selected language. If there is an image you should get it. Otherwise wizards puts an image of the card backing on the page. See http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/ ... eid=224940 as an example.

I can't pull images for languages that don't exist out on the gatherer

[dairou]

I thought so but i wasn't sure.

Thanks for the quick reply! Great work!

[woogerboy21]

I thought so but i wasn't sure.

Thanks for the quick reply! Great work!

This does make me wonder if all the cards that don't have pictures download the same multiverseid. This probably is the case. If so I can work in something that checks to see if the multiverseid is the card backing and warn about the images not being available rather than download useless back images. Hmm... something on my todo list

[dairou]

Awesome . I also think a check list (rather than a single selection) for the set selection list would be great

[woogerboy21]

Awesome . I also think a check list (rather than a single selection) for the set selection list would be great

Yea I've never been to happy with the current UI but a UI redesign has always been low on my lists of things to complete. A checkbox for the sets most likely wont happen for 2 reasons. First, (probably most important) running out of screen space with all the current options. Judging by your screenshot you use a larger resolution. I however have a netbook . Second, there's no way for me to dynamicly add checkboxes (atleast not that I am aware of at the moment). I'll keep it in mind though.

edit:
i might add a drop down menu option for something like "current standard" or set blocking.... another thing to put on the thinking list.

[dairou]

^That would be even better haha. Anyway, this is a great piece of software

[woogerboy21]

^That would be even better haha. Anyway, this is a great piece of software

Thanks, I try and improve on it any way that I can. As long as the gatherer doesnt update there format it should work for a long time coming.(with minor set info updating)

[Godleydemon]

how is this program pulling the server information and translating it to where the pictures are supposed to go. IE what is the server path to the pictures and are you using the classic abbreviation for the set folder names? If so, this can be used in conjunction with the old MWSPA with some of my minor tweaks. I've been able to add in all of the sets, I've been using unreliable servers to pull the information. But when trying to pull the information from your server from MWSPA it comes back an error. So, I was wondering if I could get the server path. I don't like torrents or rapid share <.< and I'm being stubborn about it.

[woogerboy21]

how is this program pulling the server information and translating it to where the pictures are supposed to go. IE what is the server path to the pictures and are you using the classic abbreviation for the set folder names? If so, this can be used in conjunction with the old MWSPA with some of my minor tweaks. I've been able to add in all of the sets, I've been using unreliable servers to pull the information. But when trying to pull the information from your server from MWSPA it comes back an error. So, I was wondering if I could get the server path. I don't like torrents or rapid share <.< and I'm being stubborn about it.

The way the hta works is first there is an internal array that stores the set name, url to the gatherer for the set information, path expected by the magic album application and a depriciated variable (to be removed next release) of how many pages on the gatherer there is per set information, and set abbreviation. There also is a dropdown (select) list that stores the language names to language 3 letter abbreviations.

From that stored information it can build folder structures based on the user selection for the expected application. This of course is were also it will create requirements for constant updates (once again though, I may have a solution in place next release).

From the set URL and the beginning gatherer URL string it queries the gatherer for a checklist view and parses the html return response pulling some basic card information (such as multiversid, english name etc.) for each card. Once that information is collected it then pulls the card image from the gatherer site using the multiverseid. If you select additional options (such as alternate languages or alternate language images) it has to again query the gatherer for specific card details (located on a different page of the gatherer), parses those html response results, and locates the alternate multiverseid's for the alternate images and pulls that image instead of the english version.

But when trying to pull the information from your server from MWSPA it comes back an error.

What server are you refering to, I host nothing?

So, I was wondering if I could get the server path

You can see the paths that the hta uses (variables labeled terribly simplistic) by opening the HTA and looking at the top variables just past the <script open brackets. If you can't figure it out I can help more but in order to pull te images from the gatherer they have id's associated with each image that you have to identify from a search result when quering the gatherer.

edit:
I was reading your post about the MWSPA and I have to say I am not a fan either of the mediafire links. writing a replacement application for the MWSPA would be very easy as long as there was a host some were that would have a universal folder structure containing the images. From that quering the gatherer to collect the set information and then redirecting the app to pull the images to the hosted server would be very simple. Infact if someone were to offer a nice host and keep the folder structure in the format of {setname}\{lang-abbr}\{cardname} that I could send a html get query to pull the image name, I would be more than willing to throw something together. (im not certain how mwspa works)

[Godleydemon]

MWSPA is actually a pretty simple program. It does much of the same thing as gatherer does. It goes through and finds all of the pictures for every set, by using the appropriate set abbreviations. for example:

Mwspa calls LWR, which calls the server, Mwspa goes through and looks for the folder labled LWR, it then cross checks between there picture names and your picture names in both LWR folders, then downloads the ones you don't have, automatically putting them into the appropriate folders.

So, pretty simple stuff really. currently, I've been using this server:
gh.mtgfaster.com
(edit = which is apparently down now T.T)


it seems to work for at least some of the pictures for Mwspa. But, it obviously doesn't have a lot of them on hand. I also had no idea you didn't host these files yourself. I was under the assumption you did, and when looking at the code was baffled on why you had chosen to do it the way you did. Now I understand, you have to, because of the way the host server handles the image exceptions.

Mwspa is actually a pretty stable and usable program, and very easy to edit. If someone just had a server to host the images, it would be enough for Mwspa to work.

[Huggybaby]

MWSPA used to pull pics from the server here. Anyone with a server could host the pics and MWSPA would work with them, and many people have over the years. The problem is that no one lasted more than a few months, the demand is too great.

Also, MWSPA pulled each pic individually, which gave a lot more overhead than downloading a zip file. The original app was called MWSA and it actually pulled zipped sets and was very fast. That app is probably still around too, but the problem, again, is that no one has enough bandwidth to handle the demand.

There are a couple of other sites that host these pics. (For some stupid reason they download them, repackage them as rars and relabel them.) These sites have been around for some time but would be brought to their knees if coupled with one of these E-Z downloaders.

That leaves the only long term free solutions: Torrents, and MediaFire/Rapidshare etc + jDownloader.

[Godleydemon]

I think I can understand that pretty well actually when put like that. crunching the numbers just in my head is a little baffling for me. (it also pretty well explains why my Mwspa surrogate server is probably down, lol)So I'm wondering if there's a better solution to doing this with a auto downloader while keeping pings to a server load that is manageable. what about low quality crops? a lot of people, including myself. Just want the pictures to fill in that gray space. High quality for me is just a perk I can do without.

[woogerboy21]

Yea I guess I don't have a problem with the mediafire technology I am just not a fan of how the organization of the set list to URL is handled. Seems a bit unorganized but I may just be looking at it from a different point of view than you guys since you manage it.

Also this brings up an idea for a "verify" option to the image options. Also GodleyDemon the hta does LOTS of checks. Infact many times it does checks just after checks mainly because I wanted to make the various sub routines and functions independant of any source calling them. All the code started out with some basic structure and concepts in mind but as things have been added the code could use some cleanup. I am working on some of the "cleanup" in the next release. That and working on making various portions of it more dynamic so the main code shouldnt need updated but the options can be imported from external sources. (like the language list etc.)

Oh and if I were to host images it would really be bad. at 30k up people would be waiting a LONG LONG time LOL.

[Godleydemon]

Yea I guess I don't have a problem with the mediafire technology I am just not a fan of how the organization of the set list to URL is handled. Seems a bit unorganized but I may just be looking at it from a different point of view than you guys since you manage it.

Also this brings up an idea for a "verify" option to the image options. Also GodleyDemon the hta does LOTS of checks. Infact many times it does checks just after checks mainly because I wanted to make the various sub routines and functions independant of any source calling them. All the code started out with some basic structure and concepts in mind but as things have been added the code could use some cleanup. I am working on some of the "cleanup" in the next release. That and working on making various portions of it more dynamic so the main code shouldnt need updated but the options can be imported from external sources. (like the language list etc.)

Oh and if I were to host images it would really be bad. at 30k up people would be waiting a LONG LONG time LOL.

A verify tick would be interesting, but I don't think its needed. Because it would cause a user to be downloading for a very long time, because it would be re-downloading images he or she already have and then replacing them. This could also increase the amount of image corruptions as well as increase the server load. So I wouldn't bother with that option, because people who experiment like me, will click it not knowing what it does. Just to see what it does.

Oh and since we're on the subject, we need a better gui for gatherer, lol.