A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Ever been frustrated by the number of clicks it takes to navigate to a team's info page on the FIRST website? Or ever wanted to go directly to the Team Updates page but forgot that the URL is "http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc/content.aspx?id=450"? I sure have, especially when browsing on a mobile device (try typing "https://my.usfirst.org/myarea/index.lasso?page=teamlist&menu=false&year=2008&eve nt_type=FRC" using the iPhone keyboard).

So, I spent a couple of hours one gloomy evening coding up a solution (okay, okay, it was a sunny afternoon, and I was trying to avoid doing schoolwork), and shelled out nine bucks for a domain.

So, for example, http://frclinks.com/r would instantly redirect me to FIRST's Regional Events page, while http://frclinks.com/w/47 would redirect me to a site that is strangely familiar.

This is all done using Google App Engine, an awesome, free platform that lets you easily develop web applications (using Python) and host them on Google's infrastructure (I can't recommend it enough if you're into building web apps). I'm releasing the code under the BSD open-source license; you can get it here.

I'm sure I'm missing some useful links; let me know if you have any suggestions for additional shortcuts or general feedback.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Awesome work

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Often.

My feature request of the day would be a link to the official FIRST web forum (in particular, I want the FRC Q&A). Maybe syntax like "http://frclinks.com/f/qa" (or just "http://frclinks.com/q") would be appropriate?

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

I love it, and will recommend/use it often!

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Good timing. With registration pending, the FIRST map is essentially useless (0 teams registered for everything). I was trying to find some past regional attendance data for a few teams (to figure out how Buckeye, Boston, NYC, Michigan changes might impact FLR attendance) but I couldn't click into any team's info page and or remember the string (page=teaminfo). (EDIT: if you go to FTC and click "Who are the teams from this area?" it displays all events and specifies year=2008, so that lists teams)

I would recommend improvements like /t/[state/providence/country abbreviation] to redirect to list of all teams in that area (t/de would show the list of 2 teams in Delaware). It will not work right now because no one is registered but it will be useful later. You might even want to add extras like /r at the end of /t/ or /e/ string to display only rookies in that area/event.

Mods: Can you sticky this thread? The more people know about this the better. More than once someone has asked me how I got a list with certain options out of FIRST's site, only to tell them I learned the variables and typed it in.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Great job!! this is a much more efficient way to get official info on teams.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Pat, this is awesome! You are the man. I cant even explain how annoying I find it to navigate the FIRST site.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Pat,

Totally awesome.

Maybe /e/s/[event] and /e/mr/[event] to pull up schedules and match results? I know those would be handy to use on a blackberry while at an event.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Great work.

Now we can finally use the FIRST website in a rational manner, the way websites are supposed to be used.

It's too bad the people who designed the FIRST website in the first place made it so convoluted and full of worthless Javascript code. It wouldn't be hard to implement mod_rewrite on the USFIRST.org servers to make breadcrumb-based page URLs.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Amazingly Efficient!

You could even market the use of them as "clinks" since your redirect site url lends itself to this brand or descriptor.

As in FR clinks.

It seems every new tech concept has some sort of branding.

P.S. since it's out in public now "clinks" would fair game as a public domain "brand".

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

AMAZING. You just made my day.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Okay, I've implemented some new "clinks" based on Tristan's, Brian's, and Karthik's suggestions. There was a bit of a namespace collision for the short forms of schedule, (match) results, and rankings/standings, so if anyone has a better suggestion please speak up.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Not to make it any easier for us end users...

but could the redirect server support a --form-- on the page

That we could enter the values into then hit enter?

I've bookmarked

http://frclinks.frclinks.com/

and just type the argument ie w/47 in the address bar to work this way,

but it would be more intuitive to have an active entry box on the page.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

additionally to make this even easier than it already is, in firefox (and possibly others) you can bookmark http://www.frclinks.com/%s then go to the bookmarks menu and right click your new bookmark, select "properties" and type "frc" in the keyword. You can now type in the address bar something like "frc t/330" which will redirect you http://www.firstlink.com/t/330 (which redirects you to the corresponding FIRST page)

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

samsofa330

Nice ;) Firefox only though

chrome, ie and safari/win don't

safari/win does allow a shortcut key but then back to clicking address bar and entering your arguments after the url

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Done.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

I just set IE 7 to use FRC Links as a search provider—so in the search box, with the appropriate search type selected, I type the desired parameters, and hit Enter.

To set this up, select "Find More Providers..." from the search box dropdown menu, enter "http://frclinks.frclinks.com/TEST" as the search string, and then call it something descriptive.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

You can also do the same thing in Chrome ->

1. Click the "wrench" toolbar button and choose Options
2. On the General tab, click the "Manage" button under "Default Search"
3. Click Add, then fill in the info:
Name: FRCLinks
Keyword: frc
URL: http://frclinks.frclinks.com/%s

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Is there a way to get information from a specific year using this? Lets say I wanted to see the list of teams who attended the 2007 Championship.

I might have over looked how to do this (and I can't find the list on the FIRST site either...)

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

https://my.usfirst.org/myarea/index....7&sort=teamnum

URL Code:
Replace year with whatever year you want in that string in the URL.
That works for every year from 2002* through the present (minus 2009 with no info yet of course.)


*2002 lacks a lot of data, but the team numbers are still there.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Right now there isn't; it just defaults to 2009. But that's a good idea - I'll add something when I get the chance.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Pat, you're my hero.

good work man. I'll be using this.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Ok, I've implemented year qualifiers for the event shortcuts. I also put in a link for the awards page (not sure how I overlooked that one before).

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Karthik asked me to add a link for the 2009 Control System page - which I'm sure people will be visiting often once teams get their hands on the new system.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

A couple new features to announce:
Credit goes to Andy Burchardt and Sam Couch for the suggestions.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Pat, you're my new hero. You just saved me approximately 10,000 clicks by the end of the season... maybe more. Thanks so much for making this awesome resource for us! I just shared it with my team.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Way to go, Pat! Can't wait to get my new smartphone and set up this great time saver...this is what FIRST is all about and why CD is such a fantastic service to us all. Keep up the good work!

Shortcut for Safari
 

You can replicate the search bar functionality in Mozilla with Keywurl. This requires you to also install the SIMBL library, however, but it's worth it.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Thank you Pat for this program. It will be my FIRST place to go when I look for things.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Thanks for considering the suggestion Pat. You have no idea how much time and attention span frclinks saves me. =)

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

One new link I just added, prompted by The Blue Alliance's migration to cleaner URLs:
Just a reminder that you can always see the full list of options by going to plain ol' frclinks.com.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

BLESS YOU

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Just added event codes for the Championship divisions (thanks to Travis Hoffman for alerting me to this omission).

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Found it exceedingly useful all season long, and now it's even better...

Mahalo!

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

I wanted to call attention to this thread again as registration season is underway, since I'm sure many people haven't heard of FRCLinks yet or have forgotten about it.

Also, I wanted to announce that you can now once again see FIRST's information on all current and past teams using http://frclinks.com/t/[team number].

For those interested in the details, when FIRST updated their website this past fall, it totally broke this functionality due to a new URL scheme (using a strange "tpid" number to specify the team instead of the team number directly) and the requiring of "session tokens" (couldn't view a team from a past season, even if you knew the tpid, unless you had a valid token in the URL). The tpid problem I got around a few weeks ago by writing a script that parses the FIRST team list and caches a database of team->tpid relationships, but that only worked for 2010, for whatever reason. I just spent a few hours today devising an even more convoluted workaround for past seasons, but it works now.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Hi Pat,

I just want to tell you how valuable the frclinks are, and I am amazed how you can get around the problems with the new changes at the FIRST.org website.

I have a question. Is there a way to query to get all the team nicknames? I see it when I bring up each team's information but I need to do it one team at a time which is not feasible. I have a scouting database that I publish to share with all other FRC teams on CD but the list of nicknames is incomplete. Any suggestions?

Thank you for creating the frclnks website.

Regards,

Ed

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

If you don't mind parsing through a whole lot of text, there is https://my.usfirst.org/frc/scoring/i...?page=teamlist, which is a feed used by the field scoring software to download team information.

Right now it seems as if it is still only outputting 2009's data, but I imagine it will be updated closer to the competition season.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

There are no delimiters. How do you know when one field ends and another field starts? I only see spaces. Are there hidden special characters in between?

Ed

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Looks like it's delimited with tab (\t) characters. I've been able to import directly into Excel in the past (copy-paste, and then in the paste popup, "Create Refreshable Web Query...").

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Yes, I just realized it. I paste it to Notepad with unicode and then realized it is a Tab delimiter. I got it into Excel now. Wish I knew this last year. Thanks.

Ed

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Prompted by FIRST's repeated reminders that the FRC news page will be an important channel of information during the 2010 season, I've created a link for it.
As always, the full list of links and event codes can be seen at http://frclinks.com.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Thank You.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

In the interest of saving an extra click when you want to look up something in the competition manual, I've added a few more shortcuts:
For example, if I wanted to look up a particular rule in the Robot section, I'd type frclinks.com/d/r into my address bar.

These shortcuts will keep working even if the filenames change as revisions are made.

For those not aware, there's a complete list of shortcuts at the frclinks.com homepage, and suggestions for new ones are always welcome.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

this is great. navigating FIRST's website has been driving me slowly insane for a long time

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Another feature request: /u/#, where # is the team update number from the current year.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Great idea, and it's now implemented.

http://frclinks.com/u/4 now links directly to Team Update 4, for example. And if you try to go to an update that doesn't exist yet, it redirects to the updates page.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Cookie Time - Pat, can you please update frclinks with the new regionals? Also, what the heck is the Queen City Regional code? I tried oh2, cin, qc, qcr, bengalsstink - no dice!

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Queen City is 'ohc'.
I'll try and get the new event codes up soon.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Can you add old event codes? To access historic results of events that no longer exist (e.g. Great Lakes Regional). I particularly mean adding the codes to your "index" (presumably if one used the old codes, they'd work as-is). Might turn it a bit ugly though, if there's overlap, having to add years..

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Surprised that didn't work.


Possibly MAR events as well Pat?

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Wow, so I remember finding this thread many years ago, but forgot about it. I'm so happy to see that this is still working. Thanks for all your work Pat! This is a fantastic resource!

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Just updated the event codes and added a stupid workaround to make "on" and "on2" work for 2012 (seems like FIRST forgot to hook them up internally or something).

Basel, I'm not sure I want to pollute the info page with old event codes (if there are any; FIRST likes to just repurpose them for new events). Any old codes should just work anyway.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Perfectly understandable. Since my post, I've realised that the only 3 pre-district events in Michigan (West MI, Detroit, Great Lakes) have retained their codes and, as you said, they work, which is good enough for my purposes.

This is a fantastic resource! Thank you for creating it

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Thanks, Pat. Seriously, when everyone sees Pat next year at an event or wandering around Silicon Valley, give this man a cookie (or a brownie, or some other baked good). He deserves it and then some for all his hard work.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

I just fixed a bunch of stuff that was broken when the new docs and the new manual website were released. Also added:
Let me know if you see anything else broken, or otherwise have any comments or suggestions.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Seconded, although I don't think I'd recognize him. Maybe a voucher for a cookie, etc. would be better. He probably wouldn't want a cookie that I'd been carrying around waiting to meet him for the entire event. :) Pat might weigh in with a wishlist? Silicon valley has such a stereotyping rep, that I might have offered something different. :D Or how about a Starbucks coupon?:cool:

Seriously, if frclinks is not on your browser's toolbar, you cannot really call yourself deeply involved with FRC. :cool:

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Might as well come in and say this is my homepage, except when I change to Reddit over the summer. Love this so much. Glad to put a site name to a face; never thought there would be a CD thread on FRCLinks.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

I'll see him at SVR and CVR, so I'll be sure to give him a cookie from you. And one from myself, though as a fair warning, the one from me will be of better quality. :p

Not to sound like a broken record, but Thanks Pat! I love the site, and makes navigating the FIRST website so much easier!

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

FYI, FIRST has changed the event code structure for 2013 events, so if you're trying to track registration using frclinks.com/r/[event code] and the old familiar codes, it won't work.

The list of new codes is posted on the frclinks.com landing page.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Thanks for the updates, Pat. Can frclinks.com/b redirect to the new FRC blog?

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

He would appreciate them but nothing compares to the caliber of his baked goods. His peanut butter brownie combo cookies killed me when we visited the Poofs last winter.

For Pat, thanks for constantly updating the links. It really does take the hassle of browsing the FIRST site for information regarding teams and events.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Done. Thanks for the reminder.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Pat, do you accept offers of bacon? Perhaps chocolate covered bacon and your favorite adult beverage will suffice.

Thanks for keeping this up to date, I use it all the time.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Pat, why not make a pre2013 event code, used on a post 2013 request automatically redirect to its 2013 event code? You seem to have the conversion table...

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Along those lines, there have been a few times I've tried to look up old years data with the new event code.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Yeah... I've done that a bunch of times now too. Pat? Can you make the event codes auto coerce to the proper one based on the year we ask for?

ie. If I go to frclinks.com/e/on/2013, it should redirect to frclinks.com/e/onto/2013
or if i go to frclinks.com/e/onto/2009, it should redirect to frclinks.com/e/on/2009

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

WOOW that's awesome!! You just made my day!

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Hokay, done.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Awesome! More cookies for Pat.

Frclinks is probably the single biggest tool I use for FRC. Makes getting to the information I want SO much easier.

Almost every day I use it for something.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Is frclinks broken now? It appears that USFIRST.org has pushed out a new team & event locator.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

The team links (frclinks.frclinks.com/t/nnnn) are "broken" in so far as the direct to the 2014 teams, most of which do not "exist" yet, or something of the sort. (?)

Things with years (frclinks.frclinks.com/e/m/new/2013) or that are not year-specific (frclinks.frclinks.com/t) continue to work, and the team page links will "work" once those teams register. Might be one of the few downsides to have TIMS open so early! ;)

EDIT: FIRST did change the event codes this past year, too. They're arguably more logical, but if you're not sure about them you might have to re-lookup from frclinks.frclinks.com.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

With this URL: http://www.usfirst.org/whats-going-on/team/FRC/83083

FIRST is SOOO close to having a useable website without the need for other resources like frclinks (although I still like frclinks for requiring less characters typed). All they need to do now is to change the URL from having a unique database ID to having the team number like the following link:

http://www.usfirst.org/whats-going-on/team/FRC/122

These links would be so much better.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

I pushed a quick fix this morning, but I'll improve upon it later. It should now at least work for teams that were active in 2013.

I did a little bit of investigation and it looks like this new scheme is going to be slightly easier to work with, at least -- FRCLinks will no longer have to scrape the FIRST website on every request to get a valid session token when looking up defunct team numbers.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Cool, thanks!

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

It's completely possible, although I have no clue how they have the site setup. They're using Drupal now, so the random numbers might be the node ID (I think). Using Fields and Tokens, they very well could use the team numbers.

There may be some valid reason why they don't have it setup that way, though.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

I just added a new link which some people may find useful:
For example: http://frclinks.com/dr/fim

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

::rtm::

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Looks like FIRST changed their website again, which in turn is causing problems with frclinks.com

I get the following error when trying to search for a team:

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Nah, that's just the error message that happens when a Google App Engine quota is exceeded. Usually that happens because someone is trying to iterate through all the teams in a script or something using frclinks. One of these days I'll add some negative caching to prevent this.

The quota will reset at midnight PDT and it should work again.

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

Ah, gotcha. Thanks for the explanation. Good to know that it wasn't just me (and that it wasn't a bug needing fixing)

Re: A new way to browse the FIRST website
 

frclinks.frclinks.com/q is broken, it directs to https://frc-qa.firstinspires.org/Questions.php, the correct link is https://frc-qa.firstinspires.org/

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