After a rather long time of working on this, mainly due to IRL commitments, I can finally proudly introduce the latest “big” tool added to the FR Tools suite: the Pinglist Manager!
There are many places on Flight Rising that use pinglists. This can be for art threads, dragon hatcheries, auctions, etc. There are many ways of managing a pinglist too. Some opt to keep the list in a forum post, others make very fancy looking google spreadsheets. Every option has their pros and cons. I am hoping that the pinglist manager I created will be a valuable alternative to the options already present based on the features that it currently has:
So this is quite an expansive list of features (and part of the reason it took so long to make this thing!). Allow me to break down what each feature does, below the cut.
Username validation
Whenever you add an entry to a pinglist you have the option of choosing to add a username, or a user ID. Both options will have the tool quickly verify if the user exists on Flight Rising and caches their username and user ID. This is not case-sensitive. If you made a typo, it will error out. As such, the pinglists cannot have names on them that do not exist. No more typos!
Protection against vandalism
Vandalism... it’s human nature to destroy or so we are lead to believe. Sadly this is also true on the internet and people can be petty. The tool uses the same randomly generated ID/secret key combination used in the skin tester for both the pinglist itself and each individual entry on the list. You cannot edit the pinglist without its corresponding secret key, unless the pinglist is linked to your account. Similarly you cannot edit an entry on a pinglist unless you have its secret key, or are logged in to your account that has that entry’s Flight Rising account linked.
The pinglist manager rather heavily leverages the ease of use having an account on the FR Tools site, but I remain convinced that users should be able to use all of the tools available without needing to make an account.
Configurable access
Access to a pinglist can be set to either Private or Public. As the name implies if the list is set to private then only the owner of the pinglist can edit it. There is one exception however. If the list is private, but you are on that list and you want to remove yourself you can do so without needing to contact the owner. The requirement for this is to have an account on the FR Tools site with your Flight Rising account linked however. This is to keep the above point of “Protection against vandalism” safe.
Easily manage multiple lists
This point is the only point on the entire feature list that requires you to have an account on the FR Tools site. Pinglists can be linked to an account on the FR Tools site and as such the site can easily display all lists that you own, and the ones that you are on, should you link your Flight Rising account.
Auto-update usernames
Whenever someone changes their username every single pinglist has to be updated to accommodate for this change. The Pinglist manager attempts to make this an easier process by having a single button to update every single user on the pinglist. In fact, if someone else updates their pinglist’s usernames so will every single other pinglist on the site that has the same users!
Built-in formatting
Pinglists are nothing without the ability to copy the entire pinglist so you can paste them in your forum thread. But what is even nicer is the ability to pre-format your copy so you won’t even need to do anything to make it look pretty! The build in formatting options allow you to change what comes before your list, what comes after your list and also what separates the names on your list, allowing you to easily customize yout text on a per-list basis.
Importing pinglists
You probably already keep pinglists some where else, like a forum post, a Google spreadsheet, a .txt file perhaps. The tool lets you import those existing names through something called a CSV (Comma Separated Value) file. Currently the tool has a guide how to do that with a Google spreadsheet, but it is fairly easy to make one with a bit of googling. It also will check whether the usernames exist on Flight Rising and return you appropriate messages if something can’t be found (eg. someone changed their username and didn’t update it on your list). Hopefully this makes it easier to port your existing lists to the tool.
And that’s it! Thanks for reading all of this to the end.
As always feedback is more than welcome, I will do my best in answering all questions and feedback. If you encounter any issues then please report them on github, or DM me on Discord at Nensec#1337.
The pinglist manager tool will probably go live somewhere today. Me and kveikur are currently testing the site locally to get any kinks out of the way. There are probably a ton of things to add and change to make it better, so I am looking forward to feedback from you guys who will use it! Here are some images to give you an idea on how it’ll look. When the tool is pushed live there will be a blog post explaining how the features work : )
