I'm just going to throw this out there as a low-priority feature request, feel free to ignore it if it's not something you're interested in doing!

Would a JSON api be possible for MaGog? For example if someone adds "&format=json" on the end of a search URL it returns the data as JSON instead of HTM? This would make it easier if others want to scrape your search and build on it for whatever reason.

It's an interesting idea ("scrape the scraper"). I know nothing about JSON, but looking it up on Wikipedia, it looks pretty straightforward. I shall put this on my possible todo list. But...

Do you have any idea in mind as to how one would want to use it? Does it have to be related to a specific search or could I just offer a link to the entire MaGog database in JSON format?

Meanwhile, are you aware that the entire up-to-date MaGog database is already available online in text format (easily importable into a spreadsheet) for anyone to use or browse? See the third bullet at the bottom of the MaGog engine page.

Yeah downloading the whole database is fun and it's easy enough to parse the text. However the reason I was asking for arbitrary searches is so I could have a `live` result of a specific query without having to wade through the whole thing. For example, if I just wanted to have the most up to date list of regionally priced games with their countries listed. But, like I say, this isn't something I'm absolutely desperate to have, it's more a convenience.

Btw, I don't know what language you're programming in but many have a library for converting to and from JSON format. Not that I'm insisting on that format or anything!


Do you get it on Gone Home?

I understand now. They give the message only to people who are affected by it. I am not, being in the US.
As ChrisSD suggested, check Gone Home because that one is regionally-priced but not in the Eurozone.

The phrase "Fair Price Package" only appears on users that are required to pay more than GOG's US price, thus it won't appear in regionally-priced games that are merely cheaper in Russia. For example, even if Shadow Warrior (2013) costs 600 rubles (a bit over $15.5) in Russia, there is no indication of regional pricing for other users, as there is no region with a price more expensive than the standard one ($39.99). As a matter of fact, I wouldn't even be aware that Shadow Warrior (2013) was regionally-priced, till I took a better look at the price I'm being asked to pay for it ($39.49) and realized that something's off.

Got it. I'll put it on a slow burner and see when I have time to look into it. I am afraid that Desktop Dungeons is a harsh mistress (at the moment).

The search engine is written in perl.

Another question:
Suppose I do generate it per search, would JSON be significantly more convenient than the bare-bones text format I currently use for sharing the whole database?

Ok, I understand, thanks.

I'd hesitate to say "significantly" as your format isn't too hard to parse (' | ' can never appear within a field right?). So for the languages I use it's really only the difference between using a one line in-built function vs. writing a parsing function myself.

That's significant enough. I'll look into doing it with JSON.

Thanks for looking in to it. Like I said if it would be too much trouble or other things take priority then no worries. :)

Unfortunately I only have discovered MaGog a few days ago during the recent changes on GOG as I only barely was reading the forums before. I wouldn't have expected such a good tool to exist. The search options are just a pleasure and the database has all the information for my game list I had to copy & paste manually from the GOG page before. :) Thank you for your great work, mrkgnao and all the others who helped!

The current line oriented version is probably easier to parse and to import into spreadsheet tools, and the JSON format probably will be a bit larger. But any logically structured format should do the job.

Do you mind if I would download the database file on a daily basis? (I don't want you to exceed your data limit or otherwise harm the server.)
I thought about adding the database content into a repository to better be able to track the changes. Though from the 2 versions I've downloaded so far there are much more changes than I had expected. The repository may grow too fast. Have to try it out and maybe think about a better way to do it.

PS: To reduce the bandwidth use you also could compress the database file for download (bzip2 reduces the file size nearly by a factor of 8).

Thank you for the kind words.

Feel free to download the database as often as you wish. I doubt this 2 MB a day traffic will have much effect on my 400 GB a month bandwidth limit. Remember that in order to generate the database I get about a 1,000 pages from GOG twice a day.

As for the large number of changes, you might want to follow my regular posts here, where I summarise the more interesting changes on a more-or-less daily basis (look for "From MaGog's logs").

Finally, you might want to take a look at the option of getting your shelf and wishlist info from GOG into MaGog (using the "Get From GOG" button), which allows you to manage all your GOG games from inside MaGog.

Enjoy.

They are well-deserved. Even when GOG screws up like at the moment there's still the good community here, providing workarounds, hints, lists, statistics and even great tools like MaGog.

Thanks!

Thanks, I've also discovered that thread (by reading the MaGog thread :)). But just in case GOG screws up the forums too. ;)
And sometimes it's easier and more convenient to work with local tools instead of using a web browser.

I just did that and it worked like a charm. :D It's quite interesting to filter your own games by genre, language or OS support or just sort them by rating. But then it also made me slightly mad again when I realized how many of my owned games already have been removed from GOG. :(

And here's already my first idea for the wish list. :) When you have your own games imported into MaGog it would be nice when the owned and maybe also the wish-listed games would be more visible in the search results, perhaps with a different background color.

That's a really nice idea.
Please send me suggestions for favourite background colours from here.