Responses!
Today I've done a lot of work, and thus have broken Snacksby a metric ton. When you go to check your pantry, you might have like 450 ingredients in it, and that may or may not be my fault! I think most of my work today was with substitutions and your pantry, but I think I'll be able to cover it by responding to comments people left on the last post. Here goes:
also, (for example) if I say I have "flour" in my pantry, recipes which ask for "all purpose flour" don't come up - would be nice to have 'flour' to stand for all kinds of flour.
This is how substitutions are supposed to work, and now finally do! You add "all-purpose flour" as a substitution for flour, and then whenever you do a search it should act like you've got APF if you say you have "flour" and you have substitutions turned on. Today I set up the pantry so it automatically includes degree 1 and 2 substitutions (covered poorly here), so you should be okay in the future. Watch out for degree 1 vs. degree 2 substitutions, I'll probably have to kick it 4th-grade style with a Venn diagram for that.
If I were telling someone what I had in my pantry, for instance, I wouldn't normally list seasoning. It's just something I always have, since any given recipe won't use that much, but I couldn't get a recipe to come up until I added 'black pepper' to my list.
Some people have suggested ignoring seasonings completely, but there's two problems with that. #1, I actually don't have a way to do that. Snacksby doesn't know the difference between ground pepper and chicken breasts. #2, sometimes people want to find recipes that don't have the spices in them. I know everyone probably has sugar, but maybe a diabetic or somethin' wants something that doesn't - I'd rather err on the side of making people include everything they've got. I'm trying to maintain a little list on the pantry maintenance page that talks about what you should make sure to include, although I'm sure there's a better way to do that.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to put up the ability to search even if you're missing some ingredients. I figured out how to code it this morning, just haven't implemented it yet. The only gripe I've got with it is that you're probably looking for something with 5 ingredients where you only have 4, but it will definitely show you something that has 2 ingredients and you're missing 50% of them. That will get fixed eventually, I guess.
sometimes i'm adding something and wonder what else other people have used and what are common tags so that people can find what they need!
this is a great idea! i guess it can look at the ingredients and figure this out. look for this feature in the future, it seems a little complicated for it to happen soon.
I guess that's about it. Oh, bigtime change - you can now edit recipes that you added! Soon you'll be able to edit substitutions, too. Just give me a little bit longer on that one. Another change was that searching from the "tell us what you've got" box now uses substitutions (degree 2) automatically, so people don't get so angry about now nothing works. maybe I should make searching from that box include water and stuff? you really only use that box if you're in a hurry, if you reaaally didn't want water you could always use the search page. who knows, i'm done for the day.
also, (for example) if I say I have "flour" in my pantry, recipes which ask for "all purpose flour" don't come up - would be nice to have 'flour' to stand for all kinds of flour.
This is how substitutions are supposed to work, and now finally do! You add "all-purpose flour" as a substitution for flour, and then whenever you do a search it should act like you've got APF if you say you have "flour" and you have substitutions turned on. Today I set up the pantry so it automatically includes degree 1 and 2 substitutions (covered poorly here), so you should be okay in the future. Watch out for degree 1 vs. degree 2 substitutions, I'll probably have to kick it 4th-grade style with a Venn diagram for that.
If I were telling someone what I had in my pantry, for instance, I wouldn't normally list seasoning. It's just something I always have, since any given recipe won't use that much, but I couldn't get a recipe to come up until I added 'black pepper' to my list.
Some people have suggested ignoring seasonings completely, but there's two problems with that. #1, I actually don't have a way to do that. Snacksby doesn't know the difference between ground pepper and chicken breasts. #2, sometimes people want to find recipes that don't have the spices in them. I know everyone probably has sugar, but maybe a diabetic or somethin' wants something that doesn't - I'd rather err on the side of making people include everything they've got. I'm trying to maintain a little list on the pantry maintenance page that talks about what you should make sure to include, although I'm sure there's a better way to do that.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to put up the ability to search even if you're missing some ingredients. I figured out how to code it this morning, just haven't implemented it yet. The only gripe I've got with it is that you're probably looking for something with 5 ingredients where you only have 4, but it will definitely show you something that has 2 ingredients and you're missing 50% of them. That will get fixed eventually, I guess.
sometimes i'm adding something and wonder what else other people have used and what are common tags so that people can find what they need!
this is a great idea! i guess it can look at the ingredients and figure this out. look for this feature in the future, it seems a little complicated for it to happen soon.
I guess that's about it. Oh, bigtime change - you can now edit recipes that you added! Soon you'll be able to edit substitutions, too. Just give me a little bit longer on that one. Another change was that searching from the "tell us what you've got" box now uses substitutions (degree 2) automatically, so people don't get so angry about now nothing works. maybe I should make searching from that box include water and stuff? you really only use that box if you're in a hurry, if you reaaally didn't want water you could always use the search page. who knows, i'm done for the day.
posted by soma at 7:38 PM
5 Comments:
there should be a substitution for "salt and pepper" consisting of salt and pepper, i thought about it and feel like chains could get dirty real fast. also, i fixed up the pantry page so a) you don't get things you already have in the virtual pantry, and b) the degrees actually work!
Let me know if anything goes crazy, I don't trust my pantry code to do anything but break and stick another 500 items into my cupboard.
p.s. stock and broth are different - one is heartier and has more flavors in it (more meat? vegetables?), while the other is just made from scraps and bones. 1st or 2nd degree substitution, though, mos def.
Concerning the argument about including seasoning etc. when describing items in my pantry, why not have a list of default stock items (seasoning, herbs, etc.), perhaps this could be edited and stored for each user, then have a check box to decide whether I want these items to be included in a search?
That sorts both of the problems you listed.
that's a pretty hot idea, dave. maybe a 100 most popular ingredients or something? that would make it much easier on the user, instead of having to enter a million things by hand. then a checkbox for each pantry item...
after i get the query optimization together i'll include chains as an option on the search page.
Excellent idea Rparker! I think this site has so much potential. Creating shopping lists would help a great deal.
I would also like to see a search by user option. Various research has shown that that people often use other people as information sources. I don't see why recipes should be any different. For example, I already know that annsley has great recipes and she is updating all the time. Perhaps I want to check out all her new recipes.
Hope this doesnt end up being too much work for you Soma. Good luck with the Adsense - I think you deserve a little reward. BTW I can see an offer from a big company coming in in the not so distant future. Well done you!
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