Project-GC Forum - Method requests

Getting home country and region (1 reply)

KaiserVonChina — Fri, 16 May 2025 03:58:27 +0000

I would like to have a function like PGC.GetHomeCountryAndRegion() that would tell me the home country and home region of the player, for which a checker is executed.

I totally understand that the exact location cannot be exposed and already the county would fall under "data privacy violation". But country and region does not fall under "protection worthy data" even for something as sensitive as medical data (i.e. "Protected Health Information (PHI)").

And country and region of a player can already be found out e.g. via "Statistics/Top finders". It would make checker development easier, if a script could simply ask for "home country" instead of calculating a histogram to find the country with most finds.

GetOldest and cache attributes (1 reply)

bmuzzin — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 15:21:51 +0000

I'd like to do a challenge where you need to find the oldest caches containing certain attributes. For example, my first foray was going to be the 10/50 oldest tree climbs in Ontario, Canada. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this is possible currently, because GetOldest doesn't return the attribute sets of a cache. (I would assume this is the case for GetHighest/Lowest/Favorites as well, although I haven't confirmed). I assume this data exists in the database.

Would it be possible to add to the params for those methods, to request certain fields of the results (as with GetHides)? Or alternatively, if there was a (fast) query to return details about a cache, given a GCcode (and that isn't necessarily a user's find), I could also work with that. Thanks!

Adding a map to the checker (4 replies)

syfun — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 18:12:20 +0000

Hello,

How can I add a map to a checker results?

For example: https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC8ZGGX/54659 requires attending events in 25 Michigan counties. It outputs which counties the cacher has attended events in. I would like to add a map, in this case for Michigan, that has the counties shaded in that the cacher has attended events in. It would be even better if the attended counties were green and the unattended counties were red like in the "map counties" tool. About the closest thing I can come up with for an example is the checker for https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC411A1/42821

Thanks
syfun

GetFinds(): filter by attribute (no replies)

queengooborg — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 04:28:45 +0000

It would be great to add an option where cache finds can be filtered by attributes. I've run into a few checker requests that would greatly benefit from this, as it would help reduce processing time and system resources!

GetContinentDefinitions() (1 reply)

JakeDot — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 07:26:16 +0000

The Documentation mentions a method GetContinentDefinitions(), but it seems not to be exposed to LUA?

Has it been removed or was it planned at some point? The documentation seems a bit jumbled.

GetOldestCaches issue (7 replies)

sloth96 — Wed, 11 Aug 2021 16:03:14 +0000

There appears to be an issue using GetOldestCaches when there is a minHiddenDate set in the filter. When it is set the following error appears:

Error 8, lua_callbacks.php:1525  Undefined variable: minHiddenDate

Example of working code can be seen here:https://project-gc.com/Challenges//62414
Non-working code is https://project-gc.com/Challenges//62415

The working code uses

testfilter={}
testfilter.country="United States"
testfilter.excludeArchived=true

mycs=PGC.GetOldestCaches({filter=testfilter,limit=1})

The non working code uses:

testfilter={}
testfilter.country="United States"
testfilter.excludeArchived=true
testfilter.minHiddenDate="1970-01-01"
mycs=PGC.GetOldestCaches({filter=testfilter,limit=1})

I started going down this road as an alternative to using GetNumCachesInArea to create a jasmer checker that will automatically notice missing months. Like GetNumCachesInArea the country required limitation will prevent a worldwide version. It still would be nice to specify for a single region so we do not need to manually update checkers as caches get archived.

GetNumCachesInTimeWindow() (no replies)

sloth96 — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 17:19:11 +0000

I am looking to create a more flexible version of the Jasmer checker that automatically identifies if there are any caches available in that time window. Some challenges such as the massachusetts month by month with this checker play games with adjusting the windows. Checker seen here. https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC2KN9X/35021

However unlike the Massachusetts challenge, I would like to specify the type. As a for instance a Mystery Jasmer where you do a Jasmer with only Mystery caches. Instead of manually adjusting the windows as caches get archived and published, it would be nice to let the computer take care of it. This adjustment would be more of an issue for rare cache types such as Wherigo's and Virtuals.

Basically this would look very similiar to GetNumCachesInArea() except country would be optional.

Accessing Public Attributes in PGC API Calls (5 replies)

sloth96 — Sun, 27 Jun 2021 07:23:18 +0000

Hello,

https://project-gc.com/doxygen/lua-sandbox/classPGC__LUA__Sandbox.html descripts that MAXCPUTIME is available as a public attribute

const MAXCPUTIME = 60

However attempting to access it as PGC.MAXCPUTIME appears to give me an error.

Am I missing the syntax or does a function need to be defined to grant access to this?

I can see this being useful so project-gc can adjust the times scripts take to manage load and scripts can tailor their computation.

Thanks.

GetHighest method (19 replies)

Rikitan — Sun, 27 Jun 2021 07:16:07 +0000

Hello,

I have one type of challenge on my mind and I'm not sure if it is possible to create a checker with existing scripts and methods. Basically, I would need a method similar to

PGC.GetOldestCaches

- but instead of hidden date parameter it would be using altitude (elevation) parameter.

Example of script (Oldest): https://project-gc.com/Tools/Challenges?edit&tagId=42338
Example of checker: https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC8615X/42338

Challenge on my mind:
Find highest caches in 8 regions of Slovakia.
For each region: 1. highest cache = 10 points, ... 10. highest cache = 1 point.
Your goal is to collect at least XXX out of possible YYY points.

In general, the config would be similar to Oldest challenge - country, region, county, types, limit, score.
Requested GetHighest method would enable series of very interesting hiking challenges around the world.
In case anyone can create a checker using existing method, that's great .. GC code you can use is GC8QE3B.

Thank you for any response.

GetFindsWithChallengeCheckers (5 replies)

GreyHams — Sun, 23 May 2021 21:08:58 +0000

Hi,

I have seen many, many requests for Challenges involving other Challenges found.

Obviously we cannot use the word Challenge in the title as this is against guidelines (and inaccurate) but I was thinking about what if we could get the list of finds the user has found with published challenge checkers.

I see two main problems with a new GetFindsWithChallengeCheckers:

1 - the information strictly speaking wouldn't come from Geocaching.com..... BUT, when you think about it.... the info IS there as every Challenge published since the guidelines must have a checker on the page, at Geocaching.com.
2 - Not all challenges have checkers.... but its is an every shrinking proportion

What does everyone else think?

Lab caches included in challenges? (18 replies)

Team On — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 10:38:20 +0000

Hi folks,
according to https://project-gc.com/forum/read?7,27 lab caches are not included in the challenge checker system yet.\

Are there plans in changing that?

GetFavorites missing options (1 reply)

arisoft — Wed, 27 Feb 2019 10:31:30 +0000

There is difference with parameters used for these two functions

PGC_LUA_Sandbox::GetFavorites
country (string)
region (string)
county (string)

PGC_LUA_Sandbox::GetOldestCaches
country (string or array)
region (string or array)
county (string or array)

Is it possible to add the array option also to the GetFavorites?

New Log-method (10 replies)

magma1447 — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 16:03:35 +0000

Quote
arisoft
While debugging this I really missed the debug log output. Is there any possibility to get the output saved?

To be honest I am not sure how to solve the problem with getting the output from a process that's in an endless loop.

Your web browser is contacting a web server, which starts a PHP process (with LUA support). PHP-FPM is configured to kill the process after X seconds, the output is then lost.

I can currently think of two solutions.
1) Instead of outputting to stdout, write it to a file that can later on be retrieved. Since the LUA-sandbox doesn't have any functions that can read or write from/to disk a new PGC-api-method would have to be created for that purpose.

2) Build a standalone framework. In this case the LUA code would be run on your computer. One of the downsides would be that you have to install an environment for executing LUA. PGC would then need to expose the LUA callbacks as AJAX calls so that they can be fetched from LUA code in some way, probably via a built LUA library. While this has some advantages, it's a lot more work to implement, and has the mentioned downside that the developer would need LUA installed as well.

Of those suggestions I can think of right now, #1 seems easier. I'll get right at trying to implement it. I don't know how hard it will be yet.

GetAggregateCaches (5 replies)

travelingGeek — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 01:38:25 +0000

Before I suggest a new method, let me explain what I wish to do… so you can consider other methods as well.
I would like to know the number of Reward Virtuals (Virtual caches published between 8/24/2017 and 8/24/2018) that have been published in a given country and region. There will never be more that 4000 of these and as of January 8th, there are only 1081 published. Using Map Compare on the 8th, I was able to determine the following:

As of January 8th, 2018 the current Reward Virtuals statistics are:

1,081 Reward Virtuals Published.
That is 27% of the 4000 will be made available to publish between 8/2017 and 8/2018.
4 have already been archived.
7 are temporarily unavailable at present.
The US has 209 of the 1081 or 19% of published reward virtual caches.
The state of Texas has 7 (0.6% of world, 3.3% of US).
Germany has 223 which is 21% of world wide reward virtual caches.
The time period for publishing reward virtuals is 365 days.  We are currently 38% of the way through that period.

I would like to write a non-checker script to update and expand on these statistics. It could even follow a typical challenge out put such appending personal statistics to the above stats:

Congratulations TravelingGeek!  You have found 16 Reward Virtual Caches!
That is 1.5% of the currently published reward virtuals and 0.4% of the possible 4000. 
You have found the equivalent of 7.7% of the US published caches.
You have found the equivalent of 229% of the Texas published caches.

I started thinking about this with the intent of publishing challenge caches for finding 1, 5, 10, and 15 reward virtuals. My friendly neighborhood reviewer reminded me that I need to be sure there are several local cachers that could meet the requirements… the most I could find locally had only found 3.
In doing that research, I found the above statistics so instead of challenge caches (yet) I want to have a script that will produce some interesting statistics that could be shared in caching groups or social media.
I’m not sure this fits project-gc.com but I think it could be. I don’t know… maybe this would be better in something like BadgeGen but I know Project-gc and don’t know them.
In any case, here are the methods I would propose to implement the above:

GetAggregateCaches By Region, By Country, All. Take the standard filters to limite types and hidden dates.

Alternatively, a purpose built API could be: GetRewardVirtuals ByRegion, ByCountry, All.

Not sure how easy this would be on the PGC infrastructure, but if a json file could be updated on a weekly basis, I could use GetJson to accomplish what I want.

All that said about what I want to do, I think the GetAggregateCache api could have some very interesting uses for challenge checkers. There are many scripts that “sum up” regions or types or sizes… GetAggregateCaches could implement much of that behind the API where things run much more efficiently (I presume) and reduce the load on the challenge checker compute resources.

What do you think?

TableRemove return value (2 replies)

arisoft — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 16:34:04 +0000

Quote

table.remove (table [, pos])

Removes from table the element at position pos, shifting down other elements to close the space, if necessary. Returns the value of the removed element. The default value for pos is n, where n is the length of the table, so that a call table.remove(t) removes the last element of table t.

For some reason TableRemove seems to return nil instead of the removed value.

Signal for premature results (7 replies)

arisoft — Sun, 23 May 2021 20:59:06 +0000

Some time consuming checkers may know at some point, if the challenge is qualified or not, but the checker may continue to find a partial solution and it also generates html documents which may take even longer than the primary check.

Checker could signal the primary result (ok value) immediatelly when it is achieved.

There could be two advances achieved with this construction.
1. Automated test batch could stop the checker before it generates any unusable informative user output.
2. If the checker is running from user interface, the system could selectively give additional time to give opportunity to find the best partial solution. (For example for paying members.) At least, system could tell, if the user qualifies or not, regardless of possible time-out.

Filtering by GC-Code from Tag (2 replies)

arisoft — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 13:12:32 +0000

Previous conversation is here

After Mar 2017, no documentation about qualifying the challenge is required from the finder. This means that the cache owner needs accurate tool to verify the claim, after the finder has logged the challenge as found. It is logically impossible that the challenge cache itself could be used prematurely before to qualify.

In many cases this is absolutely irrelevant but the result may be wrong. For example if the challenge needs one (1) found and the checker accepts the challenge itself, then it never fails when the owner confirms the finder's qualification with the checker - as it shoud.

Most effective solution could be a filter option for PGC_GetFinds which use the GC-Code from the Tag. This way the Tag is fully clonable and for a bonus there is no need to sequentially search the output to exlude this single cache.

Mod Request for GetFinds (1 reply)

speedy-1702 — Mon, 17 Jul 2017 03:02:29 +0000

Since I love hiking and combining with long-distance multi-caches (e.g. GC2H7T4, GC2QA1H, GC2X070, GC31GAE, GC625VV, GC2Y3HM) I like the idea for challenges with a minimum number of waypoints with type "physical" or "virtual").

Therefore I would need following modification in the function getFinds:

new field: num_wp_physical
new field: num_wp_virtual

The fields would enable to create a checker for such a challenge.

What do you think of this idea?

Request for GetNumberOfCountiesInRegion and similar (10 replies)

sumbloke — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 04:18:57 +0000

I'd like to request three new functions to be created:
GetNumberOfCountiesInRegion
GetNumberOfRegionsInCountry and
GetNumberOfCountiesInCountry

This is to allow scripts to calculate the percentage of counties in a region a user has found and similar. The scripts would want to check for the return value being zero, as I assume that would be the result of calling the function on a country/region without the specified level divisions.

Mods Request for GetFavorites (5 replies)

sloth96 — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 10:08:43 +0000

The GetFavorites API call that we use can only return 100 caches. This means that any disabled or archived caches get filtered out for printing the table. However we need them in the list to see if a finder has found them. At this time there is no way of making multiple calls to build a list larger than 100 in the API call because there is no max favorite points option to get the second batch of 100.

An example of how this is impacting things is in http://project-gc.com/forum/read?8,9938

There are two actions that can solve this problem.

The first is increase the max of limit to something larger. 1000 comes to mind from other calls.

This would only be temporary until the number of archived and disabled plus the number of caches is more than 1000.
To solve this it would be nice to have a maximum number of FP/Wilson/... option as well. That way one could get to any number larger than limit through multiple calls.

Thanks.

radius-filter for GetNumCachesInArea (3 replies)

king-ton — Thu, 30 Mar 2017 07:52:55 +0000

It is possible to add radius-filter for method GetNumCachesInArea? It's like the radius-filter for GetFinds.

I need it for challenge GC4MTR3. The task is to find all traditional caches within a radius of 5 km. With the new filter it will be possible to get the number of possible finds and compare it with the number of finds by the user in this area.

I hope it will be possible. Thanks!

Request for GetSimplifiedPolygonsCountry () (3 replies)

sloth96 — Thu, 30 Mar 2017 18:35:55 +0000

Hello,

I request the creation of GetSimplifiedPolygonsCountry () which mimics the behaviour of GetSimplifiedPolygonsCounty () and GetSimplifiedPolygonsRegion. (). Like the others they could be called with just $country.

Based on Target's Contiguous County Checker, I created an Contiguous Country Checker among others including ones for Regions. The Region and county versions are able to show maps based on the other GetSimplifiedPolygon calls. It would be nice to round out the set for common visual properties.

Thank you.

README (no replies)

magma1447 — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 13:04:18 +0000

Since we are not reading here often enough we believe this is a good workflow for requesting methods.

Write a post here about the request. Explain as much as you feel necessary, purpose, expected parameters and so forth.
Hopefully there will be some feedback from others. Depending on how much feedback it could be smart to summarize it all in one post or adjust the initial request.
Ones things are settled and agree upon. Create a ticket in Project-GC's support ticket with a link to the forum thread. This should probably speed things up a bit.

GetOldestCaches allow array for regions/countries filter? (18 replies)

sloth96 — Sat, 18 Feb 2017 00:58:32 +0000

Hello,

I have been using GetOldestCaches to fetch the oldest cache in each of the 50 US states.
http://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC6K9N3/23184

Several complained about the script not completing for them. After several attempts to speed it up, I bootstrapped with just getting the oldest caches in the country. The API call takes a string and not an array. This meant I had to cycle through one region at the time to finish it out. Each GetOldestCaches took about ~10 seconds so this took a while. Runtimes for me are about 130 seconds which seems undesirably long for a single checker.

My initial hope was to use an array of regions to speed it up and minimize api calls/server loading/ and the like.

I have a similar script with countries that has the same problems but the times don't seem so bad.

Existing code uses this api call so perhaps a seconds is needed.

Right now, I would rate this nice to have not necessary.

Possibility to filter in GetFinds by the amount of FP (4 replies)

Jakuje — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 13:09:47 +0000

Would it be possible to add a possibility to filter caches in GetFinds by the amount of FP awarded to to this cache? It would simplify the creation of the checker below (would need slight modification of existing, instead of writing a new one). I believe it would be also useful for different checkers handling favorites. Using filter is more effective than filtering afterwards.

http://project-gc.com/forum/read?8,2759

Number of used FP (1 reply)

Target. — Mon, 30 May 2016 14:39:22 +0000

After a question for a checker that required that you have given out (used) 100 favorite points
According to the thread the challenge are approved by a reviewer if a checker is available.
http://project-gc.com/forum/read?8,458

So this is a request for a API metod to get the number of given out (used) FP by a user.