Automated Unofficial Leaderboard Update Program

[amp88]

A lot of people (myself included) follow the developments each week in the WRS through Luxy & Small_Fryz's excellent Unofficial Leaderboard. I've been wondering for a while how the leaderboard was updated, and through a recent conversation with Luxy I've found out it's updated manually. Luxy or Small_Fryz go through all of our posts looking for sector times to update the board. This seems like quite a laborious and (presumably) monotonous job. So, I thought I'd give it a shot at writing a program to automatically scan the thread looking for sector times so that instead of taking an hour of someone's time it takes a quarter of a second to do all the work. As you can probably imagine, it's pretty difficult to sift through all the code that makes up the thread, weeding out everything that's not useful and just getting down to the times. Thus, I need your help. I had intended on developing the program to cope with all possible scenarios in terms of what format people post in, so as not to disturb people's normal activities, however there are a few things that I'm finding pretty hard to get around.

The first thing is that I've noticed that Event posts times in the following format:

"x'xx.xxx / x'xx.xxx / x'xx.xxx"

This particular format has been giving me a bit of a bad time, I can't seem to develop a way of coping with it that doesn't require a huge hack of the code. If it would be possible, Event, could you please post times in the following format:

"x'xx.xxx
x'xx.xxx
x'xx.xxx"

or

"xx.xxx
x'xx.xxx
x'xx.xxx"

These two formats are perfect for the program

The second major problem is people quoting other people's sector times in their posts. So far, this has been a right pain in the rear. I can't (at the moment at least) see a general purpose solution to this problem. Basically what happens at the moment when someone quotes another person's sector times, the person quoting gets the first person's sector times, which in the first 100 posts of the Week 14 thread means that "santiagomo87" ends up with "holl01"'s sector times (wish that would happen to me one of these days).

Oh, and this is another post where the format makes the program go a bit wonky, if this kind of format could be avoided it would be greatly appreciated.

I'm intending on building in a safeguard of sorts into the program which makes sure everyone is within a certain margin of each other, but if the program can't pick up times properly from a certain post, it just means a human has to check, slowing down the process.

Ok, a summary (I know long posts are boring, I didn't intend it to be this long )

Please try to post sector times in one of the following formats, if possible:

"x'xx.xxx
x'xx.xxx
x'xx.xxx"

or

"xx.xxx
x'xx.xxx
x'xx.xxx"

 

[VTRacing]

Can the program cope with the "T" notation? As in:

T1: 0'xx.xxx
T2: x.xx.xxx
T3: x.xx.xxx

Or do we need to just post the times themselves?

By the way, great idea and I hope it works.

 

[amp88]

Can the program cope with the "T" notation? As in:

T1: 0'xx.xxx
T2: x.xx.xxx
T3: x.xx.xxx

Or do we need to just post the times themselves?

By the way, great idea and I hope it works.

Yep, sorry, I forgot to mention that...the program can work with the "T" notation, as long as there's a space between the "T" and the time.

i.e.

"T1: 0'43.456
T2: 1'34.234
T3: 2'23.456"

will work, and

"T1:0'43.234
T2:1'23.345
T3:2'12.456"

will not work.

Good question though, thanks for asking. Anyone else with questions feel free to ask

 

[r0gu3]

Link to said leaderboard so far?

 

[Randymcchickenf]

Sounds like a great idea to me. How far through writing the program are you?

 

[Luxy]

I've got a suggestion re: quoted sector times

Which skin are you browsing the site in, amp? If you're not already, go to MyGTPlanet > Edit Options, scroll down to the bottom and choose "GTPLite" for your forum skin. The HTML it spits out is much cleaner than the default one, and quoted text appears between <blockquote> and <fieldset> tags, which shouldn't be to hard to write a regex for ...

<!-- message -->
<div>
<blockquote>
	<fieldset class="fieldset">
		<legend>Quote:</legend>
		quoted text ...			
	</fieldset>
</blockquote>

actual post text ... 

</div>
<!-- / message -->

 

[bleurabbit7]

This would be awesome. It would save time and headaches for some people. I hope it works the way you plan. 👍 👍

 

[amp88]

I've got a suggestion re: quoted sector times

Which skin are you browsing the site in, amp? If you're not already, go to MyGTPlanet > Edit Options, scroll down to the bottom and choose "GTPLite" for your forum skin. The HTML it spits out is much cleaner than the default one, and quoted text appears between <blockquote> and <fieldset> tags, which shouldn't be to hard to write a regex for ...

Sounds pretty good, I've been thinking about this for a while, but the problem is that some people post some of their message and then quote someone else, then possibly more of their message. I might have to check every single line for the quote tags. I'll have a look into it though

Sounds like a great idea to me. How far through writing the program are you?

I've spent roughly 6 or 7 hours on it over the last couple of days, the parser (which reads the times from the page) is coming along well, reading correctly nearly all of the posts.

Link to said leaderboard so far?

I'm not trying to write my own leaderboard, I'm just trying to make it easier for Luxy & Small_Fryz.

I can show you the program output at the moment though...

This is what my program reads from the first 100 posts in the Week 14 thread as being sector times submitted by people:

"Username: ballstothewall
T1 Time: 42.326
T2 Time: 1,09.515
T3 Time: 1,46.724
Username: amp88
T1 Time: 42.163
T2 Time: 1'09.221
T3 Time: 1'45.949
Username: rotbarsch1979
T1 Time: 0'42.269
T2 Time: 1'08.513
T3 Time: 1'44.228
Username: ballstothewall
T1 Time: 42.287
T2 Time: 1,08.817
T3 Time: 1,45.288
Username: vtec_guy
T1 Time: 0'42.507
T2 Time: 1'08.965
T3 Time: 1'45.471
Username: somebody
T1 Time: 42.543
T2 Time: 1'09.504
T3 Time: 1'44.553
Username: MR8
T1 Time: 41.856
T2 Time: 41.856/1'08.570
T3 Time: 41.856/1'08.570/1'43.109
Username: holl01
T1 Time: 40.880
T2 Time: 1'06.858
T3 Time: 1'40.964
Username: santiagomo87
T1 Time: 40.880
T2 Time: 1'06.858
T3 Time: 1'40.964
Username: Event
T1 Time: 0'42.111
T2 Time: 1'08.535
T3 Time: 1'44.669
Username: Randymcchickenf
T1 Time: 41.659
T2 Time: 1.08.
T3 Time: 1.08.002
Username: Alpine
T1 Time: 0'41.141
T2 Time: 1'07.381
T3 Time: 1'41.265
Username: Alpine
T1 Time: 0'41.039
T2 Time: 1'07.078
T3 Time: 1'40.908
Username: hOt6o4bOi
T1 Time: '41.200
T2 Time: '07.142
T3 Time: '40.945
Username: jump_ace
T1 Time: :41.815
T2 Time: 1:08.018
T3 Time: 1:43.788
Username: Puck927
T1 Time: 0'40.708
T2 Time: '06.906
T3 Time: '40.419
Username: &#946;lackbird
T1 Time: 44.466
T2 Time: 1'12.578
T3 Time: 1'49.699
Username: kensei
T1 Time: 41.936
T2 Time: 1'08.601
T3 Time: 1'43.443
Username: jump_ace
T1 Time: :41.538
T2 Time: 1:07.838
T3 Time: 1.07.
Username: MR8
T1 Time: 41.742
T2 Time: 1'08.287
T3 Time: 1'42.976
Username: MisterWeary
T1 Time: 0'41.934
T2 Time: 1'07.985
T3 Time: 1'43.574
Username: bleurabbit7
T1 Time: 0:41.937
T2 Time: 1:08.577
T3 Time: 1:44.313
Username: r0gu3
T1 Time: 0'41.736
T2 Time: 1'08.672
T3 Time: 1'43.465
Username: Z.
T1 Time: 41.173
T2 Time: 1'07.214
T3 Time: 1'42.165
Username: vexd
T1 Time: 41.338
T2 Time: 1'07.784
T3 Time: 1'42.608
Username: ballstothewall
T1 Time: 41.538
T2 Time: 1,07.888
T3 Time: 1,43.493"

It stores the fastest times from each person (fastest being the three-sector group with the quickest T3) from these results as:

"ballstothewall 0'41.538 1'07.888 1'43.493
amp88 0'42.163 1'09.221 1'45.949
Event 0'42.111 1'08.535 1'44.669
Alpine 0'41.039 1'07.078 1'40.908
&#946;lackbird 0'44.466 1'12.578 1'49.699
Puck927 0'40.708 0'06.906 0'40.419
MR8 0'41.742 1'08.287 1'42.976
MisterWeary 0'41.934 1'07.985 1'43.574
Z. 0'41.173 1'07.214 1'42.165
rotbarsch1979 0'42.269 1'08.513 1'44.228
holl01 0'40.880 1'06.858 1'40.964
hOt6o4bOi 0'41.200 0'07.142 0'40.945
bleurabbit7 0'41.937 1'08.577 1'44.313
kensei 0'41.936 1'08.601 1'43.443
r0gu3 0'41.736 1'08.672 1'43.465
vtec_guy 0'42.507 1'08.965 1'45.471
somebody 0'42.543 1'09.504 1'44.553
santiagomo87 0'40.880 1'06.858 1'40.964
vexd 0'41.338 1'07.784 1'42.608"

Now, the output is by no means perfect. MR8's first time in the output is totally incorrect, since in post 35, he said "Had a 41.856/1'08.570/1'43.109 but I clipped one of the spectators on the 2nd hairpin" which really messed the program up
Also, randy's second and third sector times are incorrect. I'm not sure why this is, but I'm looking into it. hOt6o4bOi's second and third sector times are also being read incorrectly, which, again, I'm not sure about. Puck927's are being ready incorrectly since there's no space between the "T" notation and the times.

 

[STINGER05]

good work amp88!

I have a suggestion to make, but dont know if that is technically possible:

Wouldnt it be the easiest way if we all had access to one page (a weekly WRS race thread) and add our times to it by modifying the exisiting page? Fastest time on top, then down, with the final T-time being -obviously- the one determining (sp ?),where we should add our time.

This would though require everybody has access to modify/edit this page and make the changes to it. Again, I'm not sure if that is technically possible...But it would save time, and it would be the responsibility of each one of us to contribute to it and look after this 'leaderboard'', and free luxy of some of his time?

(I hope I make sense to you in describing my idea....as you can tell, I'm not THE techie-wizzard and my suggestion might therefore be a bit green....). I'm just trying to be helpful..

 

[amp88]

good work amp88!

I have a suggestion to make, but dont know if that is technically possible:

Wouldnt it be the easiest way if we all had access to one page (a weekly WRS race thread) and add our times to it by modifying the exisiting page? Fastest time on top, then down, with the final T-time being -obviously- the one determining (sp ?),where we should add our time.

This would though require everybody has access to modify/edit this page and make the changes to it. Again, I'm not sure if that is technically possible...But it would save time, and it would be the responsibility of each one of us to contribute to it and look after this 'leaderboard'', and free luxy of some of his time?

(I hope I make sense to you in describing my idea....as you can tell, I'm not THE techie-wizzard and my suggestion might therefore be a bit green....). I'm just trying to be helpful..

This is a good idea. Luxy mentioned it in the conversation with me. Sadly I've got no experience at all of programming stuff for the web. I'm not sure whether it would be possible or not either, but maybe someone else will be able to give us the answer...?

 

[Luxy]

Sounds pretty good, I've been thinking about this for a while, but the problem is that some people post some of their message and then quote someone else, then possibly more of their message. I might have to check every single line for the quote tags. I'll have a look into it though

I'm not too sure how you're parsing the info out of the html, but you if you're using regex, it shouldn't be too hard to just ignore anything that's quoted text. Here's how i'd approach it ...

- break the page apart until you've got each post isolated
- remove all the line breaks
- remove everything between <blockquote></blockquote> tags
- then parse out the times

Is that doable?

 

[veilsidebr]

An idea to avoid adding times while ppl are quoting is seting a "if Quote:
Originally Posted by , then.." then don´t add it.

I mean, if in the post, there´s the words "Quote:
Originally Posted by " so the times are not added, this mean that everyone will might add their times without quoting at the same time.

 

[veilsidebr]

Great idea btw, nice job.

 

[amp88]

I'm not too sure how you're parsing the info out of the html, but you if you're using regex, it shouldn't be too hard to just ignore anything that's quoted text. Here's how i'd approach it ...

- break the page apart until you've got each post isolated
- remove all the line breaks
- remove everything between <blockquote></blockquote> tags
- then parse out the times

Is that doable?

Well, up until two days ago, I'd never written a program to "read" html code, so I've been doing it in quite a basic way. Basically I've been reading the file line by line and interpreting each line as I go. Here's a very-pseudo code breakdown of the program so far (including my first attempt at ignoring content which appears in quotes):

Set up the file to be read from (i.e. the html file from forum)
Read one line from the file
While the line is not the end of the page
  Move down through file until post is encountered
    Get username of the post
    
    If there's a quote in the post
      Skip through post until the end of the quote

    Look through rest of posts for full stops
      If a full stop is found, check if the characters one to the left and one to the right of the full stop are numbers
        If they're both numbers, take what appears between the last space or right angled bracket and the end of the sector time to be the T1 time

        Repeat this process for sectors 2 and 3, looking until the end of the post is encuontered

      If T1, T2 and T3 times have been found, create a new Record object which contains the username of the poster and the T1, T2 and T3 sector times

      Look and see if there's already been a sector time posted by this user

      If there has already been a sector time posted, check which sector 3 is faster. If the current sector 3 is faster, do nothing. Otherwise if the new sector 3 is faster, change the sector times to the new ones.

      If there has been no sector time already stored for this user, enter these sector times

That's a basic (and very messy (sorry)) run-down of the program operation so far...

 

[amp88]

An idea to avoid adding times while ppl are quoting is seting a "if Quote:
Originally Posted by , then.." then don´t add it.

I mean, if in the post, there´s the words "Quote:
Originally Posted by " so the times are not added, this mean that everyone will might add their times without quoting at the same time.

That's a good idea, but as Luxy said, it's easier just to look for the tags in the HTML code...

To give people an idea of exactly what a post looks like in the actual code, the following is the code for CFM's post, number 35 in the week 14 thread

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				Jul 12 2005, 2:39 PM
			
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<div class="smallfont"><i>Originally Posted by <strong>vtec_guy</strong></i><br><br>
				<strong>haha lol, is this car 4wd?</strong></div>
			
				</fieldset>
</blockquote><br>
 <br>
Yep.<br>
 <br>
BTW, I did 3 laps and had a T3 of 1'44.0 if that means anything. I'm
sure there's a ton of time to be taken off since I wasn't trying too
hard...</div>
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In this post, CFM quotes vtec_guy, as you can see by looking at the forum. Now, by looking at the code, it's a little harder to spot this.

However, if you look at the code and try and spot the following tag: "<blockquote>". This tag means that CFM quoted someone...so if the program can look for this tag, it can safely say there's a quote in this post. Now you've got to spot the end of the quote, which is signified by the "</blockquote>" tag. Once the program has spotted this tag, it can look at the rest of the message and be safe in the knowledge that it's looking at what was posted by CFM and not what CFM has quoted.

 

[VEXD]

What about starting a thread each week, that is for t times.
Each racer posts their t times when they get them, and they memorise the page themselves that their post falls on.

Then they edit and update the post as their week unfolds, as and when they can, leaving an accurate and up to date time listing.

This will leave the racer themselves, the responsibility of updating their own t time, and means they will be able to add their own controller method, and division number, quickly and accurately, without Luke or Dion having to fret, or be asked to change someone's details all the time.

This time information could be left in the exact format that you guys need for the automated leaderboard, which could default to post 1, and that way, people could see where they were at instantly.

Just an idea....

I could start the threads each week.... ive always wanted to start a thread....

 

[VEXD]

For example:

Costa di amalfi in an R32:

T1: 40.867
T2: 1'06.968
T3: 1'40.752

VEXD Division 1 using a DFP with sore palms


(If everybody's post had the same format, in terms of the time submissions, then the automated leaderboard would work, why not have a thread devoted to this automated leaderboards criteria?)

 

[veilsidebr]

That's a good idea, but as Luxy said, it's easier just to look for the tags in the HTML code...

To give people an idea of exactly what a post looks like in the actual code, the following is the code for CFM's post, number 35 in the week 14 thread

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				Jul 12 2005, 2:39 PM
			
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<div class="smallfont"><i>Originally Posted by <strong>vtec_guy</strong></i><br><br>
				<strong>haha lol, is this car 4wd?</strong></div>
			
				</fieldset>
</blockquote><br>
 <br>
Yep.<br>
 <br>
BTW, I did 3 laps and had a T3 of 1'44.0 if that means anything. I'm
sure there's a ton of time to be taken off since I wasn't trying too
hard...</div>
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<!-- / post #1765575 -->

In this post, CFM quotes vtec_guy, as you can see by looking at the forum. Now, by looking at the code, it's a little harder to spot this.

However, if you look at the code and try and spot the following tag: "<blockquote>". This tag means that CFM quoted someone...so if the program can look for this tag, it can safely say there's a quote in this post. Now you've got to spot the end of the quote, which is signified by the "</blockquote>" tag. Once the program has spotted this tag, it can look at the rest of the message and be safe in the knowledge that it's looking at what was posted by CFM and not what CFM has quoted.

👍

 

[amp88]

Sorry for the lack of updates; I had quite a busy weekend. Thus, not only have I not had time to post here, I've not had time to do any real updates on the program. I hope to do some more work on it this week.

Sounds like a great idea, vexd, and if that kind of proposal were accepted by the community it could be put into operation very quickly. Getting people to accept it might be more of a task though...perhaps you could make a poll to guage interest (since you've always wanted to start a thread )?

A slight suggestion on the proposed format though...I think this would be better:

T1: 40.867
T2: 1'06.968
T3: 1'40.752
Division: 1
Controller: DFP
Comment: Sore palms

You wouldn't have to enter the username as this can be read from the forum by the program and details such as the track and car could be manually entered once during the run of the program (either before the times are gathered or it could be 'hardwired' into the code for each week.

 

[Casio]

I think the T-Time Forum is a great idea. I detest going through the rigors of searching post after post looking for split times against someone in my Division.

Luxy's Board cures my illness. But because I'm much to lazy to "Right Click> Add to bookmarks", I have to search for that as well. And no offence to Luxy at all, but it doesn't have comments, which I think would help others alot.

Eg:

T1: 40.867
T2: 1'06.968
T3: 1'40.752
Division: 1
Controller: DFP
Comments: I find I'm going faster if I take Corner X in 4th gear, rather than losing some speed on the proceding hill.


It would work for the Automated T-Time-Ticker Too!
(I can not think of an another word for Automated that starts with T...)

 

[Luxy]

A slight suggestion on the proposed format though...I think this would be better:

T1: 40.867
T2: 1'06.968
T3: 1'40.752
Division: 1
Controller: DFP
Comment: Sore palms

I've got a couple to add too

Lap: 1
T1: 40.867
T2: 1'06.968
T3: 1'40.752

Lap: 2
T1: 40.867
T2: 1'06.968
T3: 1'40.752

Car: Pitz
Tuning: RM/RM, 320km/h
Division: 1
Controller: DFP
Comment: Sore palms

And I think it would be just as easy for amp's program to read a standardized format from the regular thread, as from a second one (correct me if I'm wrong, amp). If it'd be easier, amp could specify a couple of custom tags, like [leaderboard][/leaderboard], and only look inside of those. I don't think it's a good idea to break up discussion and times, because people are interested in both, and it would make it more difficult to keep track, and more confusing for everyone.

 

[EXelero]

it is a fantastic idea.
it sounds complicated, but i think the basics are a go!

it would also save the WRS chat thread being filled with Ttimes, so you can concentrate more on help and advice......

 

[amp88]

Yeah, the ideas sound cool. Hopefully enough people will vote in the poll to see what the consensus is for a new system.

 

[VEXD]

Yeah, the ideas sound cool. Hopefully enough people will vote in the poll to see what the consensus is for a new system.

Yo amp, go read my poll thread.... i think you shoudl see what people are saying, and comment, seeing as you understand the situation better than i do.
👍