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I was browsing the extensions gallery for the Mozilla Firefox browser when I
came across something interesting. There was an extension that would add a
"track package" option to the right-click menu, automatically recognizing what
courier the tracking number was from. As I order things from time to time
(mainly free(!) samples of electronics parts), I saw the usefulness of it. I
posted this to .market.shipping because of its general usefulness. However,
upon examining it, I came across another use: looking up Lego part numbers. The
extension uses Regular Expressions
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions) to recognize the patterns of
different couriers' tracking numbers. I realized that you could just as easily
get it to recognize set and part numbers, and query Peeron for them.
Here's how: (if you don't understand Regular Expressions, don't worry - you can
just copy it down)
(note: all quoted sections are to avoid ambiguity - take out the quotes when you
type it)
*if you don't have Firefox -- get it! (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/)
Trust me - once you use it for a little while, you'll never want to go back to
IE (shudder!)
*install the Track Package Extension
(http://trackpackageextension.com/latest.php)
*restart Firefox
*go to Tools|Addons (menu)
*find Track Package, and click "options"
*Click the Regex tab, and then click "Add new Regex"
*a set of empty textboxes will appear; type "Peeron General" in the leftmost
one, and "[0-9]{1,7}(-[0-9]{1,2}){0,1}" in the rightmost one. This sets it up
to recognize set numbers
*click "Add new Regex" once more, this time entering "Peeron Parts" and
"x{0,1}[0-9]{1,5}([0-9]{0,3}|[(px)|(cx)|c|b|a|p|(bpx)|(apx)|(old)|(oldpx)|(pt([a-z]{0,1}))[0-9]{0,3}[a-z]{0,1}"
respectively.
*almost done; click the "URL" tab, then click "Add new URL" twice. Two rows of
textboxes appear.
*in the first row, type "Peeron General" (important: make sure this is exactly
the same as what you typed on the other tab), then
"http://peeron.com/cgi-bin/invcgis/psearch?query=", and finally "&limit=none"
*in the second row, type "Peeron Parts", then
"http://peeron.com/cgi-bin/invcgis/psearch?query=", and finally "&limit=parts"
*click OK, and you're done!
Now, whenever you see a Lego part or set number, rather than looking up Peeron
and typing it in, etc., just highlight the number (without #, if applicable),
right-click, and select "track package". Peeron will open, and bring up the
results/info page on the set or part.
For the record, I am no Regular Expressions expert, and if someone sees a flaw
in my regexp, or a way to make it better, please reply here with your
correction. However, it has worked for me so far.
I hope you all find this a handy trick, and thanks for taking the time to read
this (rather long) post ;).
~Jeffery MacEachern
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In lugnet.db.inv, Dan Boger wrote:
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In lugnet.announce.peeron, Dan Boger wrote:
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Thankfully, the main server can support additional memory. To double the
amount of memory available, Peeron will need to pay a $400 upgrade fee.
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I’d like to thank everyone who donated - the server has been upgraded, and
hopefully, it’s noticeably faster now!
Dan
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Hi Dan,
Yes, it does seem quite a bit faster for me when I search. Looks like the
upgrade was definitely effective!
Kelly
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In lugnet.announce.peeron, Dan Boger wrote:
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Thankfully, the main server can support additional memory. To double the
amount of memory available, Peeron will need to pay a $400 upgrade fee.
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I’d like to thank everyone who donated - the server has been upgraded, and
hopefully, it’s noticeably faster now!
Dan
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In lugnet.db.inv, David Gregory wrote:
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In lugnet.announce.peeron, Dan Boger wrote:
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Peeron has been growing by leaps and bounds since our last major upgrade two
years ago - especially after the instruction scan library was moved from
http://brickshelf.com to PICSL. While this
is great news many of you will have noticed that recently we have been
serving pages sluggishly. The main bottleneck appears to be the server
memory. We want to bring our speed back up to what we all expect and to do
this we need to upgrade the server’s memory.
Thankfully, the main server can support additional memory. To double the
amount of memory available, Peeron will need to pay a $400 upgrade fee.
Peeron currently gets over 350,000 visitors each month and another 100,000
to LDraw.org. This is more than three times the traffic
we had when we switched to this server 2 years ago. Hopefully with this
upgrade we’ll be able to continue this growth!
To donate, please visit http://www.peeron.com/inv/donation_drive.
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According to the donation page, it looks like you’ve already hit your goal!
That’s pretty impressive, considering that the percentage chart was only at
2% when I donated a couple of days ago.
David “Fuzzy” Gregory
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From what I’ve seen the goal has been reached in less than 24 hours...and
probably, that’s my personal guess, in a very few hours.
That’s, IMO, not surprising, because the initial amount of 400$ is pretty low
and because both Dan as a person & Peeron as a service are so much appreciated.
Don’t forget : To support Peeron, you also have to submit inventories (one thing
I’m not used to do :-( )
Didier
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In lugnet.announce.peeron, Dan Boger wrote:
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Peeron has been growing by leaps and bounds since our last major upgrade two
years ago - especially after the instruction scan library was moved from
http://brickshelf.com to PICSL. While this is
great news many of you will have noticed that recently we have been serving
pages sluggishly. The main bottleneck appears to be the server memory. We
want to bring our speed back up to what we all expect and to do this we need
to upgrade the server’s memory.
Thankfully, the main server can support additional memory. To double the
amount of memory available, Peeron will need to pay a $400 upgrade fee.
Peeron currently gets over 350,000 visitors each month and another 100,000 to
LDraw.org. This is more than three times the traffic we
had when we switched to this server 2 years ago. Hopefully with this upgrade
we’ll be able to continue this growth!
To donate, please visit http://www.peeron.com/inv/donation_drive.
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According to the donation page, it looks like you’ve already hit your goal!
That’s pretty impressive, considering that the percentage chart was only at 2%
when I donated a couple of days ago.
David “Fuzzy” Gregory
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Peeron has been growing by leaps and bounds since our last major upgrade two
years ago - especially after the instruction scan library was moved from
http://brickshelf.com to PICSL. While this is
great news many of you will have noticed that recently we have been serving
pages sluggishly. The main bottleneck appears to be the server memory. We want
to bring our speed back up to what we all expect and to do this we need to
upgrade the server’s memory.
Thankfully, the main server can support additional memory. To double the amount
of memory available, Peeron will need to pay a $400 upgrade fee.
Peeron currently gets over 350,000 visitors each month and another 100,000 to
LDraw.org. This is more than three times the traffic we had
when we switched to this server 2 years ago. Hopefully with this upgrade we’ll
be able to continue this growth!
To donate, please visit http://www.peeron.com/inv/donation_drive.
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On Wed, Jan 17, 2007 at 06:21:16PM +0000, Jordan Bradford wrote:
> Does Peeron have a public API, like an XML-based web service?
Not a public one, at least not yet. There is a private one, used by a
few apps.
--
Dan Boger
dan@peeron.com
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Does Peeron have a public API, like an XML-based web service?
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On Wed, Jan 17, 2007 at 04:08:27PM +0000, David Eaton wrote:
> Where's it getting its data from? Is it slurping Peeron on the fly?
> Looks like it's slurping sets that it doesn't already have cached...
> And if it takes longer than 70 seconds pulling set data, it gives up.
Yes, it slurps the html pages and tries to parse them. I won't comment
on what I think about parsing HTML ;)
--
Dan Boger
dan@peeron.com
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In lugnet.db.inv, Dan Boger wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 17, 2007 at 12:20:45PM +0000, Tim David wrote:
> > I found this http://www.umann.com/lego/peeronfight/ while searching
> > for a peeron link. Looks quite interesting.
>
> Very similar to this?
>
> http://peeron.com/cgi-bin/invcgis/build
>
> Except that the Peeron version uses the sets you indicated you own,
> instead of an arbitrary list.
And the Peeron version allows you to specify parts that you own rather than just
sets. So if you got some stuff at Pick-A-Brick or BrickLink, you have the option
of acknowledging that you have it. Handy in terms of being able to pick your
list arbitrarily, though-- and in the "ignore X" options (although I imagine it
takes some effort to define what a "basic" or "minifig" part is, etc)
Where's it getting its data from? Is it slurping Peeron on the fly? Looks like
it's slurping sets that it doesn't already have cached... And if it takes longer
than 70 seconds pulling set data, it gives up.
DaveE
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