1. Introduction

Over the years of developing Xu-Fu's Pet Guide, many ideas and suggestions accumulated. I have tried a few different tools like Trello or even Confluence to keep track of them together with my development notes, but these tools are way too clunky for this small project. And they all lack transparency.
This section aims to solve both problems: all my notes in one place, and making them visible to you, the hopefully curious reader!

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2. Current Project:

Blizzard are updating the database connection to their armory (their API). It requires redoing many aspects of the page so they will continue working. They plan to switch over from the old to the new API on December 16th. It's a lot of work but if I manage to get everything done, you will not notice any difference in the page and things will just continue to work as they did before :-)

Todos:
new colors on discord for all roles
bug: opening a collection ID that does not exist defaults to landing page without error message


Interim code:

// API2 this function is temporary to convert NPCID into SPECIES - once alternatives are moved to Species ID, this function can fly out and be replaced with "Fetchpet".
if ($fetchpet > 20) {
$search_pet = searchForId($fetchpet, $all_pets, array());
$fetchpet = $search_pet[0];
}
// API2 end of temporary function to convert NPCID into Species - usually the Fetchpet IS already the species once converted

Collections move to Species instead of NPCID

Rollout:
Maintenance on
run script dbqueries for all collections
run script to move all Alternatives
run script to move all icons

go through keywords COL2 in:
- ac_viewuser
- functions
- ac_collection
- Util
- battletable2
- alternatives_tooltip
- index
- article editor everywhere
- news article editor


At the end: Remove $allpets entirely, function and call at beginning of index -
Test:
- Logged in and logged out:
- Battletable
- Alternatives tooltip
- Collection viewer
- Profile import of collection
- XLS export col viewer as well as profile
- add strategy
- change pets within strategy
- article editor


STILL WORKING ON:
- battletable (every pet checkup), needs some kind of interim function due to alternatives being stored with npcid - or move everything at once?
- deactivate article pet-tables for now?
- excel export from ac_viewuser fix
- article editor (pet selection)

- Alternatives table - PetID1,2,3 write script to move them from NPC ID to Species. Consider that ids 0-20 are reserved for special pets!
- Rewrite all pet icons to use Species instead of NPCID
- Admin - Icons => rewrite to Species instead of NPCID
- Util => Util_pet_icon_small
- Script to move all User Icons to Species ID as well



$allpets go through all files in:
AJAX / adm_update_pet.php
classes
index
root
data




API Rework - Areas to go through:
DONE - Collection Viewer
DONE - cronjob for realm list updater
DONE - cronjobs for class and race import
DONE - Update pet needs to use new API and import new fields as well
DONE - XLS export of collection
DONE - pet colleciton view on viewing others profile page




Rework missing in:
- NPC ID manual entry form + ajax
- Spell importing full rework (API not ready)
- icon picker profile - char avatars (API not ready)
- Pet collection import for database (first import. update, char import and bnet import), requires move to Species ID first (check which places collection is used
- pet collection view on my profile page


- bnet import of character data - signup and manual addition (maybe)
- oauth (pending response from blizzard)

anywhere else?
cronjob: update collection
functions: get_collection_stats needs update to new all_pets as well - check everywhere where allpets is used!
mandatory ping against /status every 30d + deletion

exchange token for new client token!?



Rollout

1. Full backup
2. make blizzard_api beta.php the main one - note down all function names that used _beta
3. make all _beta functions in functions the standard one (remove old ones)
4. Keyword API2

Look for in:
collection_viewer.php
data/blizzard_api_beta.php - also look for "_beta" for json!
functions.php
cronjob/realmlist update
cronjob/race class update
classes/admin_petimport
classes/ADMIN
ajax adm_update_pet
classes/export excel.php

5. scan all files for _beta functions and return to main ones



Last:
test collection viewer again
delete all KR and TW collections from collection viewer
delete token cache file _beta

3. Backlog:

Cleanup tasks:
- notifications on comments for news writer?
- category filtering, buttons showing the color coding somewhere
- Make sure error messages via growl are working when dead links redirect to Home. Currently broken
- go through all old news entries and sort them into the categories, small/main and fix formatting

Open tasks:

- BUG PRIO 1: Translation tool for fight names currently overwrites work of others => Version history + warning if changes were made
- TASK PRIO 2: internal notes - notification for curators ("admin (2)" ) - how? where?
- TASK PRIO 3: Detail Strat check stopped at ID 244
- TASK PRIO 1: Move PHP to Version 7 before March 2020
- TASK PRIO 3: Make comments of all languages visible in strategies
- TASK PRIO 3: battle tag in user profiles needs EU / US switch
- TASK PRIO 3: translation for "swap to your Family x"
- TASK PRIO 3: Admin button to reset rating/favourites on a strategy - suggested by Remte
- TASK PRIO 3: For Family Battler (BfA) - Add the names of the trainers as tooltips to the menu
- TASK PRIO 3: review alternatives sorting, Tags are higher rated than Ratings - swap it around?
- TASK PRIO 3: When a strategy is unpublished, will the favourites be cleared? What happens to the favs in that case or when users open up the page?
- TASK PRIO 3: article editor - Bullet points break formatting
- TASK PRIO 3: article editor - expandable text blocks
- TASK PRIO 3: Tags menu has icons with descriptions. It would be nice if these icons where clickable to toggle icons on and off

- BUG PRIO 3: When the creator comment has an unclosed tag like on it, it carries over to the first strategy line - add protection against unclosed tags
- BUG PRIO 3: Level slider in attempt recording doesn't work in some cases (tested with level pet)
- BUG PRIO 3: in profiles, btag and discord can be way too long. needs a way to display it properly
- BUG PRIO 3: article editor: when editing an article that is restricted to only ENglish and your own language is not english, it saves info into the localized part nevertheless and does not default to the EN version
- BUG PRIO 3: Reported by Jaguar: Alternatives tooltip sometimes shows a foreach error - for example on yula strategy
- BUG PRIO 3: Reported by Stan: Family Battler tooltips of family icons show sometimes the wrong achievement name
- BUG PRIO 3: comment preview on landing page cuts off comments with "COntinue reading" - if that hits a link at the same spot, it doesn't work, the continue reading becomes the link from the comment

- SUGGESTION By Irayna: Add XP Values to link list on left (like EU/US appearances of Menagerie). To see which fights give more XP than usual (espcially for legion world quests)
- SUGGESTION By Flatluigi: 21.03.2018: minor sort of request: for the pets that don't have a level/can't battle, take them out of the calculations for number of pets at max level/at rare quality
- SUGGESTION By Remte: I'd like to have fresh comment responses notifications cleared out when I visit them independently.
- SUGGESTION By Panseit: message system, put an icon next to the user profile icon when new messages are there.
- SUGGESTION By Irayna: When viewing other peoples collection, add a column for your own pets to compare the collections.
- SUGGESTION By Remte: A notice on the landing page when Squirt day is up on EU or US with a quick link
- SUGGESTION y Prudentius: Setting for each user to have child comments sort ASC or DESC (depending on preference)
- SUGGESTION By Remte: When substitute finder is used, the description of the fight changes pets aswell.
- SUGGESTION By Remte: Allowing non-family substitutes in non-specific fights
- SUGGESTION By Darkgroob: Longest day achievement in an article with links to the individual fights
- SUGGESTION By Unknown: tool suggestion - compare pets of users and see what duplicates could be traded between them to optimize both collections
- SUGGESTION By Grainne: A tool similar to Rufa's tables http://web.archive.org/web/20150405233814/http://signature.neflin.net/wowpets/pets.php
- SUGGESTION By Ragath: Refactor the fight selection menu and include additional info, such as XP values or "Repeatable" fight

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4. Upcoming Project: Database Restructure (0%)

The database supporting Xu-Fu's different categories and menus is very old and is not set up properly. It is very difficult to create features with it, like for example the possibilty to move strategies or some of the other projects here including rematch mass export or the new ready-check tool.

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5. Upcoming Project: New Ready-Check Tool (0%)

The Legion Ready Checker was one of the most popular tools on Xu-Fu. The addition of user strategies and breeds made this tool non-functional. To bring this back, a new tool showing the list of ALL pets could be created, showing how often the pet appears in each fight, broken down by breed. This could automatically cross-check with the saved collection. In a second step, a selector or sliders could be used to apply the table only on specific battling sections.

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6. Upcoming Project: New Pet Tables in Articles (0%)

Every category article (like "Legion world quests") has a table on it that shows the required pets. This table is not using the new alternatives system and is therefore outdated.
This project is to create a new table that picks the best strategy for each fight in the category, based on the same criteria as the alternatives tooltip (favourite, ratings, tags..) and lists those pets. This should also include required or missing breeds. The table will most likely have a longer loading time and should therefore be hidden behind a "Load Pet Table" button that dynamically loads the table only on request.
Suggestion by Remte: tooltip showing which battles the pet appears in, make this interactable and the list of fights clickable to the respective strategy page

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7. Upcoming Project: Rematch Mass Export (0%)

One of the most requested features is to mass export strategies to Rematch. Rematch can already import multiple strategies at once, but XuFu currently has no such export feature. That is mostly due to the existance of alternatives. Until user strategies and favourites, the page had no way of knowing which strategy is the best for you. This new tool will make use of those features and give you options from which section you cant to export strategies from, and if only your favourites or also the top pick for you should be exported.

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8. Upcoming Project: New Dungeon Tool (0%)

Due to Teroclaw-Hatchling changes, the hardmode guides for Wailing Critters and Deadmines have been removed. Also, because of the addition of user strategies, the Celestial Tournament Planner is not working anymore. A new tool should be created that can be applied to any of the dungeons and to find the optimal strategies based on user collection for non-healing dungeons.

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9. Upcoming Project: Pet Cards (0%)

Xu-Fu already has a database of all available pets with their skills, stats and additional info. This could be used to replace wowhead tooltips with built-in Xu-Fu pet tooltips that show more details about each pet, reduce loading times and give additional value to the tooltips.
Additional idea with it: Capture source of pets more clearly. Where are pets coming from? Add more tags as well that go along with it: Premium (for pets like baby winston - not in the shop but was a bought pet technically). Seasonal => Only available during specific seasonal events.

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10. Possible Future Projects

- hyperlink preview texts and images
- comment-section: show more info about the threads in tooltip? maybe the top comment + 2 or 3 additional ones with [..] and a "X more messages" ?
- comment-section: for "Votes", maybe add together all votes from the thread from your comments? Otherwise a +50 subcomment might be hidden because it's not the first one
- Email notifications
- Tools: Top X pets of all strategies
- "Your profile has been viewed X times."
- Add friend (what effects?)
- user setting how many comments to display per page (currently set site wide)
- better brute force protection (pw reset)
- rework all tooltips to use tooltipster
- comment moderation features directly on page, including display of reports
- allow bnet connected accounts to unlink from bnet
- comment statistics (how many, how often per month, average upvotes etc.)
- article about fun stuff with pets, what they can do:
der stinker und eine schwarze katze spielen warner bros. nach
katzen können sich auf deinen schoß setzen
bäume trinken wasser, wenn sie nahe dran sind
der schreckliche oozling gibt dir einen kosmetischen debuff...

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11. Finished Projects

11.1 Current Project: News 2.0 (finished October 18, 2019)

The news section now supports different topics and different users posting news. It shows a quick overview and is more easily searchable. Articles can be edited with the article editor for news writers and each article opens up in a separate page showing the full view + comments.

11.2 Project: Article Editor (finished April 16, 2018)

The page hosts many different articles and supports localization into 9 languages. This editor makes it easy for other users to add, edit or translate articles.
It is fully integrated into the user system, UAC, and allows on-page editing.

11.3 Project: Battletable 2.0 (finished June 02, 2018)

The battle tables were the first thing created on Xu-Fu. They are mostly static and not up to the standards of the current page.
This project was to fully re-create them, to integrate the user system, user collections and to add many more features such as breeds, coordinates, new Rematch formatting, an automated substitute finder and the option to record your attempts to make the strategy more accurate through crowd intelligence.

The substitute finder uses this logic:
no requirements => all substitutes are fine, based on skills and family
only a breed => creator pet, only show the selected breed(s). For substitutes, ignore breeds
only a stat => use the stat to determine which creator pet breed is OK. and use the stat for substitutes and their breeds
breed and stats => for the creators pet, only show the breed he activated. for substitutes, use the stat to show them or not.

11.4 Project: Dynamic Alternatives (finished July 01, 2018)

There should not be a limit to the amount of alternatives saved for any given fight. They should not have a fixed order either. The order should be dynamic and follow a logic that could include user settings, if the pets are in your collection, strategy upvotes, favourites, amount of pageviews, records of successful attempts or other factors.
The interface should use AJAX to reduce loading times and give a clear preview of the pets used.

The order in which strategies are shown is determined by 4 factors. Each factor supercedes the next. From top to bottom:

1. Favourited by user
If you set a strategy as favourite, it will be shown on top always

2. Pets missing from collection
The sorting will prioritize based on how many pets from the strategy you do not have in your saved collection:
No pets missing > one pet missing > two pets missing > three pets missing

3. Tags - optional
In the user settings, you can set the order of importance for all tags. Preferred tags move the strategy up, unfavored tags move it down in priority.

4. Rating and Favourites
Ratings and Favourites are calculated together into one single score. The calculation is:
- One favourite counts exactly the same as one 5* rating
- The stars are transformed into the numerical sequence -2, -1, 0, 1, 2
- The average is calculated and multiplied by a factor that is determined on the amount of votes+ratings:
1-10 ratings: Factor = 0.5
11-20 ratings: Factor = 0.8
20+ ratings: Factor = 1
This calculation makes sure that a single 5* vote on a strategy is not counted more important than an average of 4.8* from a large amount of voters, for example.
Likewise, a strategy that received many below average votes will be considered worse than one that received only a single 1* rating.

The first three factors only apply to registered users. If you are visiting without a user account, only factor 4 decides the sorting.

11.5 Project: User Strategies (finished August 01, 2018)

Users should be able to add and edit their own strategies. The editing options should be integrated into the Battletables without adding more pages. Most if not all options should be dynamic using AJAX to minimize page reloading.