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The generated url is:

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=%2b%5bPlatinum%20Angel%5d

Which somehow returns no results. If you add quotes around it (best approximation for our searches I could manage using the search on gatherer), it does work:

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=%2b%5b%22Platinum%20Angel%22%5d

and that works for a couple other examples I tried. Not sure if it works for everything, though.

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    Murg found that it seems to do this for all cards that share a name with a Vanguard card. There is a link to all of them in chat (I'm on mobile so I can't easily get it)
    – diego
    Commented Sep 10, 2016 at 3:12
  • Chat transcript and Vanguard card list. Weird.
    – Cascabel
    Commented Sep 10, 2016 at 3:14
  • Is there any plans on fixing this bug? It can get old to edit a question into the autocard format only to find out that the card in question is impacted by this bug.
    – Joe W
    Commented Nov 27, 2017 at 15:34

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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We've built up a nice repertoire of regression test cases from bugs we've had in the past, so I collected them here to help ensure that any fix to the autocard tool does not reintroduce an old bug.

  • Regular cards (Lightning Bolt)
  • Cards with apostrophes (Death's Shadow)
  • Single word cards whose names are a subset of another card (Island, Curiousity)
  • Double word cards whose names are a subset of another card (Sun Titan)
  • Cards that are also an avatar (Platinum Angel)
  • Both an apostrophe, and an avatar (Hell's Caretaker)

2018-03-09 Test Results*

Base URL is gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx (replaced by ellipses below).

  • [mtg:Lightning Bolt] -> ...?name=%2b%5bLightning%20Bolt%5d
    • Pass
  • [mtg:Death's Shadow] -> ...?name=%2b%5bDeath%27s%5d%2b%5bShadow%5d
    • Pass
  • [mtg:Island] -> ...?name=%2b%5bIsland%5d
    • Fail
  • [mtg:Sun Titan] -> ...?name=%2b%5bSun%20Titan%5d
    • Pass
  • [mtg:Platinum Angel] -> ...?name=%2b%5bPlatinum%20Angel%5d
    • Fail
  • [mtg:Hell's Caretaker] -> ...?name=%2b%5bHell%27s%5d%2b%5bCaretaker%5d
    • Pass

I'm going to assume that fixing the autocard tool is not the highest priority item for the Stack Exchange developers, but that they might be persuaded to fix it if we provide the algorithm. So with some help from the folks in chat I took a stab at it, and found a solution that works:

https://jsfiddle.net/ws165r64/37/

All of the generated links go directly to the card in Chrome, Firefox, IE, and Opera.

*If you want to check my test results, be aware that the autocard generated URLs appear to be baked into the posts. For example, the Sun Titan bug was fixed in 2016, but old posts were not retroactively fixed. To see the current behavior, go to the site chat and type [mtg:cardname].

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    It seems this also fixes our language issue: if my Gatherer is configured to another language, the English name still works, finds me that card, and specifically finds the version of that card in my language. It also looks like we've never used this option; it was suggested in 2014 but a different option was picked instead. This one might be the one we ought to have picked all along.
    – doppelgreener
    Commented Mar 10, 2018 at 0:55
  • 1
    Could this be posted as its own [feature-request] so we can better find & point users to it? (It's come up a few times since.)
    – doppelgreener
    Commented May 27, 2018 at 13:13
  • 2
    @doppelgreener Done. Can the Autocard feature be improved (again)?
    – Rainbolt
    Commented May 28, 2018 at 1:14

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