Request fulfilled Select multiple platforms when browsing

Is there a way to select multiple platforms when browsing trades? E.g. PlayStation & Switch? I may have missed something obvious but it doesn't seem to work, on my phone at least, and I'm sure I am not the only one who would find that useful!

Teebling wrote: 2 years ago

This is a frontend/UX nightmare as it would be hard to tell people whether they are multi-selecting or choosing between platforms.

Would it? When creating a trade, we can choose multiple platforms, which is indicated as the platform button displayed as it was pressed down. Some of the options are mutually exclusive (such as SC/HC), but platform allows multi-selection. Trade search uses exactly the same buttons, so I see no reason not to allow multi-selection there as well.
I don't know if many people would need it, though, and URL hack works as well.

Trang Oul wrote: 2 years ago

Teebling wrote: 2 years ago

This is a frontend/UX nightmare as it would be hard to tell people whether they are multi-selecting or choosing between platforms.

Would it? When creating a trade, we can choose multiple platforms, which is indicated as the platform button displayed as it was pressed down. Some of the options are mutually exclusive (such as SC/HC), but platform allows multi-selection. Trade search uses exactly the same buttons, so I see no reason not to allow multi-selection there as well.
I don't know if many people would need it, though, and URL hack works as well.

I dont know much about coding, but you have a point. When creating trade we can select multiple, when searching we cant.

See if I can do this lads, let me have a closer look this sprint. Would make sense that I can re-use the frontend component, whether the backend likes it or not is another question I'll have to find out

Investigated this just now, weirdly I can get the frontend working (multi selecting platforms) but the backend won't play.

Submitting $plat_pc=1&plat_switch=1 with this change will show only trades that are listed as being BOTH PC and Switch. It won't show all the other PC-only and Switch-only listings - the desired result.

This is probably why I stopped at this point in the first place (as I realised I'd have to write a new backend controller to handle multiple platform discovery filters).

Can't afford to spend any more time on it this patch unfortunately, added to 1.42 bucket list.

Thanks for your efforts, no worries if it doesn't work put, we appreciate it anyway.

It seems that all URL params are joined by ANDs (which is reasonable - if I choose HC and PC, I want to see HC trades on PC, not all HC trades regardless of platform and all PC trades regardless of game mode).
Anyway, thank you for your effort Teebling!

In my experience, it's normal to use the same parameter name for multi-valued parameters. So, in this case, it could be plat=pc&plat=switch, rather than plat_pc=1&plat_switch=1 to represent that you want trades on both PC and Switch. I.e., when you have the same parameter name appear multiple times it effectively works like an OR for that parameter, but it's AND for parameters with different names. So, for example, ladder=1&plat=pc&plat=switch&hc=1 would effectively be (ladder=1 AND (plat=pc OR plat=switch) AND hc=1).

I realize that this probably requires quite a bit of work though to change, on both the frontend and the backend.

I also thought of replacing Boolean platform params in the URL with a single multi-valued enum one (or the same param repeated with different values), but remember that when creating a trade, we can choose multiple platforms. I think it is easier to represent platform availablity as several Boolean columns rather than a single one with multiple values. Of course, ideally the URL query does not need to match the database structure 1:1 (speaking of which, should use at least 2 tables to represent platform availability for a trade, if we want to have DB in normal form and don't want to have available platforms hardcoded), it could be transformed before querying the DB on the fly, but this is the back-end part Teebling was referring to which would require a rework.

Or simply have an hexa value, as you only have 4 platforms, so 4 boolean that activate or deactivate.

Platform = 15 would be all, 8 could be PC and none of the others...

Bit masking! I haven't seen it being used since school.

While you're at it (or..when you're back at it), Teebs, could you give the same treatment to game modes? Just so I can finally create a WTB post for either, ladder and non-ladder, rather than having to create multiple posts for each item?

Or as an alternative (for the above but to some extent platform as well), make "nothing" = "all" in search. I.e. if/when you search for ladder now, you only find those with ladder selected. Those with neither ladder nor non-ladder selected effectively count as "nothing" and only show if you select neither in your search, as opposed to counting as "all" and also showing when ladder is selected. Slightly less of a full solution for platforms as you have more than 2 to choose from (i.e. you add a "multiple" possibility vs. just "none" and "all") but probably still a bit more useful to have "all" vs. "just 1".