I started writing this up, then sent a preview to a friend, and he was
like "oh cool, but also this is not correct?"
I didn't realize Dyeworks has limited-time support to be *able* to dye
certain items. Hey, glad we're writing this guide for people like me,
then! lol
I wonder if we can lean on Owls for this. It seems like they already
list "Permanent Dyeworks" for some items, I wonder if they say
something special for active limited-edition Dyeworks items!
In this change, instead of *always* inferring the Dyeworks base item
from the item name at runtime, we now have a database field that tracks
it, and auto-populates whenever an item *seems* to need a Dyeworks base
item but doesn't have one yet.
This will enable us to set the base item manually in cases where it
can't be inferred, and load Dyeworks base items for the Item Getting
Guide in one query with `includes(:dyeworks_base_item)`.
This migration does a bit more of the fix-em-up scripting work *in* the
migration itself than I usually do, mainly because there's so much in
this one that I think being extra-explicit is useful. We make sure to
do it gracefully though!
This works for most of the current 1,094 Dyeworks items! But there are
a few exceptions, for cases where the base item name is not quite the
same (e.g. the Dyeworks version is more concise). Maybe we'll add a
database field to override this?
- Dyeworks Baby Blue: Baby Valentine Jumper
- Dyeworks Baby Pink: Baby Valentine Jumper
- Dyeworks Black: Field of Flowers
- Dyeworks Black: Games Master Challenge 2010 Lulu Shirt
- Dyeworks Blue: Field of Flowers
- Dyeworks Blue: Stars and Glitter Facepaint
- Dyeworks Brown: Hanging Winter Candles Garland
- Dyeworks Green: Stars and Glitter Facepaint
- Dyeworks Magenta: Lovely Berry Blush
- Dyeworks Orange & Pink: Winter Lights Effects
- Dyeworks Orange: Games Master Challenge 2010 Lulu Shirt
- Dyeworks Peach: Lovely Berry Blush
- Dyeworks Purple: Baby Valentine Jumper
- Dyeworks Purple: Games Master Challenge 2010 Lulu Shirt
- Dyeworks Purple: Hanging Winter Candles Garland
- Dyeworks Purple: Stars and Glitter Facepaint
- Dyeworks Red & Green: Winter Lights Effects
- Dyeworks Silver: Hanging Winter Candles Garland
- Dyeworks Soft Pink: Lovely Berry Blush
- Dyeworks Yellow & Magenta: Winter Lights Effects
- Dyeworks Yellow: Field of Flowers
We could do a whole thing about like, checking singular vs plural, but
I'd rather just keep it simpler; I think it's clear from context that
we're talking about a category, so plural is fine even if it's not
actually more than one.
Okay so, like 30 minutes ago I added fallback behavior for cases where
we can't correctly infer the color from a PB item's name… and then I
pulled it up in the color and found that, oh, right, there are already
3 PB items that *correctly* return `nil` for `Item#pb_color`: Aisha
Collar, Elephante Hat, and Ixi Collar.
This is because they're common items that apply to many colors, like
the basics, but also many other less-special or older color variants.
They are the most likely case where we'll return `nil`.
So, I've updated our fallback UI to, instead of talk vaguely about
missing data, just assume that we're dealing with basic items. In the
rare window of time where a new color is released, and we have PB items
for it but no manual color data yet, this can just incorrectly say
"Basic Colors" and that's fine.
This is less likely than the newly-released color case for PB items,
but I figure let's be resilient anyway, especially since it's so easy
to—and also I figure this is less likely to be triggered by an *actual*
new species, and more likely to be triggered by a surprise in an item's
naming conventions.
But yeah, if `Item#pb_species` returns `nil` upstream, it'll be passed
to `Color#example_pet_type`, which will crash trying to read its ID. So
in this change, we update `Color#example_pet_type` to accept a `nil`
value, and fall back to the first Species (Acara) in that case.
This means that, if you e.g. take the Mutant Aisha Collar and delete
the word "Aisha" from the name, then load it in the Item Getting Guide,
you'll see a thumbnail of a Mutant Acara. Good enough!
Oh right, it's possible for `Item#pb?` to return true, but
`Item#pb_color` to return `nil`, if the item has the paintbrush item
description but we can't find a color whose name matches the item name.
This would be expected if a new color were added to Neopets, and PB
items for it were modeled by the community, but we hadn't manually
added the color to the database yet.
Previously, the Item Getting Guide would crash in this scenario. Now,
it correctly handles the possibility of a `nil` value for `pb_color`,
and shows some placeholder info.
To test this, I temporarily edited some item names to not contain the
color name anymore (e.g. "P-rate Elephante Shirt and Vest"), then
loaded the guide and made changes until it no longer crashed.
I noticed in the app that these queries were slowwww! I was able to
track it down to a bad query plan, as we explain in the comment.
I searched online for "mysql query performance filter on one join table
sort by another", and was surprised to find this answer suggest a
subquery, which I've often been told to expect to be slower compared to
joins? But it certainly worked in this case!
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35679693/mysql-optimize-join-with-filter-and-order-on-different-tables
I think the Rails query cache handled these anyway? But `SwfAsset` has
a `before_save` hook that checks its zone's info, and
`SwfAsset.preload_manifests` saves all the assets, on the assumption
that saving is a no-op when the record didn't change anyway. And it
basically is!
But I figure that, now that I'm realizing hooks exist, simply not
attempting to save unchanged records is probably a better
representation of what we intend to do. So I'm fixing it like that!
Another potential fix would be to preload the zones for these assets,
but I think that confuses the intent too much; the method itself isn't
using the zones, it's just a weird incidental thing that a save hook
happens to use. (Would probably be better to refactor this old save
hook into a different situation altogether, but that's for another
time!)
This is a minor nbd change, I just noticed when playing around in the
console that, unlike most other errors for this model, the `body_id`
being required is _only_ enforced in the database schema, so it isn't
returned with the usual errors. Not a big deal! Just feels like this is
clearer to work with, and more correct to what we *intend*.
This is just a bit of future-proofing! We also add a default thumbnail
URL of the cute "Neopets Circle Background", for cases where the series
name isn't known yet.
Make them the same size, add spacing between them, and also put the
"Get these items!" on the right, because the list is right-aligned and
the Save button has dynamic width (the save vs saving vs saved states),
so this makes things a lot more consistent and stable!
A funny table-layout bug, where the item "Portal to the Unknown" had a
very long Owls listing ("Owls listing: Buyable - Magic Lens + Blank
Grey Tome (NP)"), and so the table layout tried to give it more room by
decreasing the width of the action cell and wrapping the "NC Trades"
action button text onto multiple lines.
The fix: don't allow that! The table layout will figure out how to
handle this being disallowed, and give the actions cell an appropriate
minimum width.
You can now go to `/outfits/new?features=get-these-items` to start
seeing the "Get These Items!" button in the outfit editor!
I haven't tested it a ton yet, but yeah here it is!
Oh oops, I added an optional `subtitle` argument for the item table
list row template, but didn't realize that it would crash in cases when
not provided! Now, we add an initializer to set it to `nil` if
undefined.
This doesn't matter a ton in production, where we already have most of
our manifests loaded! But it matters a lot on my relatively-fresh
development instance, at times like now when images.neopets.com is slow
to respond. A single item search was taking minutes before this change
(5 seconds of timeout per asset for 30 items!), but now takes a few
seconds the first time, as it should!
Note that there's a known performance issue here: we should try to
fetch all the OWLS values at once, instead of doing them in sequence
while rendering the page!
Oh jeez, idk why this was ever in here, but yeah no, I want to be using
default browser focus outlines unless specifically overridden otherwise.
Will help keyboard navigation a lot! Yikes!!
Now, for colors like Mutant or Magma where there's no paint brush
image to show, we use a sample pet image instead, to help it have equal
visual weight and clarity as the cases with the paint brushes.
We do some cleverness in here to make sure to always show the relevant
species, if possible!
Ohh yeah, this helps communicate the process much better, especially
for what the Shops/Trades links mean.
I think I'm gonna also go get the paint brush thumbnail images and add
them to the database too, to help better communicate that this is a
paint brush item situation.
Clearer focus states, row changes bg color on hover/focus to help you
track where you are, remove the redundant image thumbnail link from the
tab order (it's the same as the item name link!)
As part of this, I added a new `search_icon` helper, and a new
`button_link_to` helper, which both styles the link as a button and
accepts an `icon` parameter to make it easier to pass in an icon!
I'm not sure when TNT changed this, but the Shop Wizard has a new
canonical URL now! The previous one redirects, but it does *not* pass
along query string parameters, so these buttons would correctly go to
the Shop Wizard but not auto-fill the name!
Now, we go directly to the new canonical URL, with query params in hand!
This is just a tech update: instead of using hand-built URLs with
`CGI::escape`, I use `Addressable::Template`, which is a more reliable
way to build URLs in general.
The motivation here is that I noticed the Shop Wizard link is actually
broken! And I wanted to fix this while I was here, but I figured let's
split that into a separate commit than this refactor. See next!
This helps us be more efficient with our use of space, keep the CTAs well
aligned, show a clear total, and set up how we might do CTAs for more complex
cases like all the potential Neopoint CTAs like Wiz/Trades/Auction/etc!
Now that we have this helper, we no longer need these stylesheets to
include a `body.controller-action` wrapper to scope all the styles!
Someday we should convert more of our stylesheets to this format,
instead of slamming them all into `application.sass` like we do now.
Ah, well!
NC prices, some CSS, and also a new application-level helper that adds
a feature I've long wanted and been working around for Turbo: the
ability to specific that a stylesheet is specific to the current page,
and should be unloaded when removed!
I use this to write `sources.sass` without the usual
`body.items-sources` scoping that we've historically used to control
what pages a stylesheet applies to. (In the long past, this was because
a lot of stylesheets were—and still are–routed through the
`application.sass` stylesheet! But even for more recent standalone page
stylesheets, I've done the scoping, to avoid issues with styles leaking
beyond the page they're meant for when Turbo does a navigation.)
This'll affect the recommended acquisition method by a lot!
NC Mall info like current price isn't surfaced anywhere else in the app
right now. It'd probably be good to add to the item page, and maybe
some other places too!
Currently we only load the homepage, so there's only actually one
wearable item to sync up! But here's the task to do it!
To do this, we also created the backing model NCMallRecord, where we'll
save the current NC Mall state!
This doesn't connect to anything yet, I'm just doing the beginnings of
loading NC Mall item data!
My intent is to run this regularly to keep our own NC info in the
database too, primarily for use in the Item Getting Guide. (Could be
useful to surface in other places too though!) This will help us split
items into those that can be one-click purchased with the NC Mall
integration, vs NC items that need to be acquired by other means.
