MGW Figure Search Preview

Have I kept you waiting?

This is a continuation of last month’s MGW Figure Search announcement.

Both Miyamoto Musashi and Snake were cool when they said it. We’re eight or nine days (depending on your time zone) removed from the planned April 1st date of availability. Unfortunately, nagging issues on the production machine kept us from it. I do apologize if you were indeed waiting.

I’m happy to report the service is now accessible via https://search.mygrailwatch.net

Registering an account is necessary to use it. Due to its work-in-progress state, we are limiting the amount of user registrations. We also want to see how much of a strain it can handle. More user slots will become available depending on the server’s burden.

Saved searches and search history will be implemented later. Hopefully with a penned privacy policy. We do not and don’t plan on selling or sharing your data. For now, an account simply grants you access to the service. It doesn’t store anything other than your e-mail address.

During this hands-on preview, you will not need an MGW Membership. Holding one, however, will be required when it officially releases. Though, if you are one before release, you will receive special recognition for your support.

Password Security

This isn’t really a place for it, but password security is important. Even more so with the recent data breaches at Facebook and others. https://haveibeenpwned.com/

When you register your account with us, the system will not store your password. Instead, it will store a bcrypt digest of it. Brute-forcing will be required in the event of a breach. We’ll also keep up with security best practices in an effort to continue securing the service.

No matter on which site you register an account, please use a strong password and do not reuse it.

Feedback

We want your experience to be the best it can be. To achieve this, we’ve opened an issue tracker on Bitbucket.

Using it, you may suggest features that you would like to see added or enhanced. Not everything can or will be added, but we will give every reasonable suggestion careful thought. And if you’re experiencing a bug, you may report it on the issue tracker too.

Searching

Searching works as you’d expect. Click your username to show the search region. The default one is “International,” with your choice being stored as a cookie. At present, results are shown from Mandarake and AmiAmi. Both offer international and Japanese versions.

Here are some additional tips.

Filters

A filter allows you to specify which search results are shown to you. Any result not matching the criteria will be dropped.

Stock Filter

You may filter stock availability. To show in-stock figures of Kurumi, you’d type the following:

Tokisaki Kurumi stock:in

Using “in” results in less typing, but the following are also OK:
in-stock
instock
available
true

Excluding in-stock figures would be “stock:out” or “stock:unavailable”

Price Filter

Let’s say that you want a figure within a certain price range. The price filter will help you.

For figures over or equal to a certain price, you’ll use:

price:>=5000

Under or equal is the opposite:

price:<=10000

For figures ranging between ¥5,000 and ¥10,000, you’ll use:

price:5000-10000

Negation filter

Using the negation filter will drop results you don’t want. Assuming you aren’t keen on Nendoroids, you’ll use:

negate:Nendoroid or not:Nendoroid

 

Note the capitalization for “Nendoroid.” The filter checks the item’s name and is currently case-sensitive. Using “not:nendoroid” won’t work right now.

Parallel Query

A parallel query allows you to search for more than one item at a time. All of the results from the separate queries will be shown at the same time. To achieve this, use two vertical pipes ( || which is Shift+\ ) with no spaces between them.

Note, filters are localized to the current query. This allows you to set independent search criteria when performing a parallel query.

When’s the next release?

There’s no hard date, but looking towards late-April or early-May. We had to cut some secret features that weren’t ready. Focus will be on bringing them back along with identifying and fixing bugs. Pagination will be among the features.

We’ll announce maintenance on Twitter and the status.mygrailwatch.net. The change-log will go on the blog.

Conclusion

Even though the service is still in development, it’s only through God that we took it from an idea to this point. If it’s His Will, we’ll take it even further. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this preview and thanks for reading. And thanks for waiting!

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