This was originally thought out and requested by TheShaman, quite a while back. I've postponed implementing it quite a few times because other stuff got in the way, and because I was not sure how to actually do it.

The idea is that many serious collectors have organized their cards in the real world into sub-collections, be it split on blocks, formats, or whatever other criteria, and it only makes sense that one should be able to do this with their inventory.

Currently I'm thinking of implementing it like this:

• you will have a drop down control in your inventory, similar to labels in gmail, and a way to create these labels easily
• selecting one or more of these labels will filter the listing - meaning only those cards labeled with it will be shown
• in the card actions control, there will be a submenu that allows you to apply a certain label to the selected cards
• when adding cards to your inventory, the labels that are selected at that point will be automatically applied to them

This could also be applied for other things as well. For example, there have been requests for some ability to specify priorities for cards in one's wishlist. One idea would be to extend these labels for wishlists as well, and let users label the cards however they see fit.


So... what does everybody think about this?

(Thanks for sending me a heads-up. Not that I wouldn't have seen this on my own, as I check the forums daily, but it was very thoughtful of you and I feel special!)

I think that this method was exactly what I had in mind. Applying it to wishlists is just icing on the cake. If you are new to this forum, or don't fully grasp what is being attempted here, keep reading.

I have a collection of many thousands of cards. Maybe even tens of thousands. While inventorying this entire collection sounds like a smart thing to do, it turns out that when I go to find a card that I have one copy of, I spend just as much time as I would have without the inventory to find it among all the boxes and binders of cards. Or worse yet, I go on a mad hunt trying to find this card and it turns out that I mistakenly added it to the inventory without actually owning it. :(

The labels function being proposed allows me to add cards to the inventory, for the purpose of building a tradelist or otherwise, but then also keeps the virtual collection of cards separated by the appropriate real-world box/binder. Example:

I decide that I am going to build a mono-green Rofellos EDH deck. I know I need a Priest of Titania card for this deck, but I'm unsure of where I keep my two copies. In the past, I had to search every green box of cards I owned, plus my vintage binder, plus my trade binder, and my EDH binder two find one of the two copies I own. Fast foward to the future, where all my boxes and binders are appropriately inventoried, and I am able to see at a glance that there is one copy in my EDH Binder, and another in my box of vintage green. I have halved my search time, and found the one that wasn't in a binder (and found out it's a $4.00 common!).

Any update on this feature?

^What he said.

18-03-2010
18-08-2010

Wow, looking at the post dates I realize this has been postponed too much :D.

Now that we're back from a nice 2 week holiday in Greece, I'll start working through the todo list, I promise :P.

You're the best. Thanks for all the great work that you do!

I'd much rather see the export feature implemented first, but i think this is an important feature as well.

Are you planning on allowing an "Unspecified" subset as well? Once you open this can of worms, unless you add an "unspecified" subset, you're going to have to deal with every single variant, like promos, Championship decks, etc etc.

I'm wondering, as you enter the cards, are you going to have the page automatically calculate the valid subsets for a given card? In other words, exclude any sets that the card did not appear in?

I don't think giving users the ability to create subsets is a good idea, simply because there will be misspelled and duplicate subsets, which will make things confusing while searching later down the road.

As for my ideas:

For adding inventory via the auto-complete box, I think the easiest way would be once you type in your card, it auto-completes, you pick the card you want and a drop-down box with the subsets is displayed automatically with a quantity box beside that, then a button to add an additional line with another subset drop-down box and quantity box for additional copies, then another button to add an additional line, etc etc. That way you can keep adding cards from different sets without every having the re-choose that card.
So it would be like this

[Auto-Completed_Card_Name_Selected] [Auto-Complete_Subset_List] [QuantityBox] [Add_Row]
[Auto-Complete_Subset_List] [QuantityBox] [Add_Row]
[Auto-Complete_Subset_List] [QuantityBox] [Add_Row]
.........................
[Auto-Complete_Subset_List] [QuantityBox] [Add_Row]

Another alternative would be to just have all the subsets listed once the card is auto-completed plus an "unspecified" subset, like this:

[Auto-Completed_Card_Name_Selected] [Subset1] [QuantityBox]
[Subset2] [QuantityBox]
[Subset3] [QuantityBox]
.........................
[SubsetN] [QuantityBox]



For in-line inventory additions using the full card list, you can have collapsible inventory rows (think the windows explorer tree folder structure, but only two levels) that have a + out beside each card's row. Clicking the plus will display all the subsets a card is in below that card's row and tabbed over to the right a little, then you can add cards or requests using the columns there. If someone adds inventory without expanding the the row, then the cards are added to the "unspecified" subset.
So this one would be like this:
Inv Trade Wish Card Name
[+] [ ] [ ] [ ] Card 1 <----- Entering values into this line would add a card to your inventory with subset "unspecified"
[-] Card 2 <----- Notice the + turns into a - when clicked. Clicking the - will collapse the tree, while clicking the + expands it
[ ] [ ] [ ] Subset 1 <----- Each of these N subsets are the only subsets in which Card 2 appears in
[ ] [ ] [ ] Subset 2 Entering values into these lines will add that quantity to your inventory with that subset
[ ] [ ] [ ] Subset 3
...............
[ ] [ ] [ ] Subset N
[+] [ ] [ ] [ ] Card 3


Then to top it all off, have the ability to view all cards in the unspecified subset in your inventory so you can have a easy to way to go back and change them all without trudging through the rest of the your inventory.

FYI, I know like bare-minimum php, so I have no idea how hard this would be to code. But I think it's all do-able, just (probably) VERY time-consuming.[/ ][/ ][/ ][/+][/ ][/ ][/ ][/ ][/ ][/ ][/ ][/ ][/ ][/ ][/ ][/ ][/-][/ ][/ ][/ ][/+][/QuantityBox][/SubsetN][/QuantityBox][/Subset3][/QuantityBox][/Subset2][/QuantityBox][/Subset1][/Auto-Completed_Card_Name_Selected][/Add_Row][/QuantityBox][/Auto-Complete_Subset_List][/Add_Row][/QuantityBox][/Auto-Complete_Subset_List][/Add_Row][/QuantityBox][/Auto-Complete_Subset_List][/Add_Row][/QuantityBox][/Auto-Complete_Subset_List][/Auto-Completed_Card_Name_Selected]

Thank you very much for your very detailed and insightful suggestion for the card input. Some of the ideas are very good and had not occurred to me while thinking about this.

I am not sure yet if I want to do the collapsible inventory rows, but the auto completed subset list in the Add Card interface - that will definitely see the light of day :)


P.S. Export to csv is coming soon (hopefully this weekend)!

After re-reading, I think I need to clarify a little bit.

The topic discussed here (Tagging / Subsets) refers to custom tags that users would like to attach to their cards so they can manage them better. So for example "Closet", "Borrowed", "Promised to Mike".

What you are referring to is actually card editions and conditions. This you can already do if you click on the little arrow to the left of a card's name, and then Edit Details.

Your suggestion for card addition still stands as it is, because people want to add cards and directly set the edition as they add it, just wanted to clarify that "tags" / "subsets" would deal with something else than editions or conditions.

So after everything is implemented, you would have
[card name autocompleted field] [number] [card edition autocompleted field] [possible custom tags dropdown][/possible custom tags dropdown][/card edition autocompleted field][/number][/card name autocompleted field]

(thumbs up)

I like it.

Aha, so you can....I saw the arrow & the options but didn't realize what edit card details was. I had seen this forum post first, so I didn't think the feature had been implemented yet.

But this only applies to cards already in your inventory, right? The down arrow doesn't seem to be functional when looking at the card database, which is where I was talking about adding the branches at. For someone with a huge collection, this would probably be how I would add cards in simply because I already have mine alphabetized and it'd be easier to go down a list than type in the card names.

Naturally, not a big deal whether you decide to do it that way or not, just some suggestions.

Hey did the export to CSV ever get implemented?

Datapotomus wrote:Hey did the export to CSV ever get implemented?

Not yet :( ... but it's coming!

Heh, no worries mate, it's free, I'm patient.

I'm planning to use this feature to let me know _where_ my cards are.

A card can be in one of a few locations:

(A) A named collection storage, such as "Trading Map", "junk drawer", "box UncU", etc.

(B) A deck.

Assuming that you can tag any card with any number of tags, then I can just make tags for all of my collections. I'd also have to make a tag for each deck, which is fine by be, and I'm not sure having an option to always have a tag for each deck is useful, because I usually have some decks registered that I haven't built yet and possibly even no further intention to build (ideas, precon decks, etc).

I'm not sure if this was what the original suggestion had in mind, but it looks like being able to create tags, and then tag each indvidual card, is going to take care of this feature request too :P

Keep up the fine work!

Will we be able to split up cards with the same name after this feature is implemented?

For example, I have 20 Swamps in my inventory. 12 of those are in a deck. The remaining 8 are available for use.

Could I use these tags to organize my collection to show me which cards are available for use or which are currently in decks? Or, can I only add a tag to all cards named Swamp?

I'd like to see inventory subsets implemented similar to deck subsets.

Beside Inventory, I'd like to be able to "Create a new folder" and "Create a new Deckbox", select the subset and see the cards in there. The main Inventory would show an aggregate of all subsets.

I want to be able enter cards by the box, labeling the box so I'd know where to find them in the future. "Box" is just a semantic, it could be a binder or even a particular row in a multi-row box.