NationStates Jolt Archive

Here is my problem. There is a Region I would like to look at as some of my friends are there, but they have not been logged on for a while, maybe, maybe not, that is what I want to check. However, I do not remember the exact name of the region so when I type it in the find region, it reports that it couldn't find it.

It either starts with the letter T or U, and browsing the entire region will take forever just to get to the alphabet or down from the Z's. Is there no way to split a regional search by alphabet or something?

Or maybe even have an option to show all regions on one page so I can scroll through them all instead of waiting for each page to load.

Perhaps the easiest thing that could be implemented is a jump to 700 out of 981 or however many pages there are. Where 700 would be user input.

Here is my problem. There is a Region I would like to look at as some of my friends are there, but they have not been logged on for a while, maybe, maybe not, that is what I want to check. However, I do not remember the exact name of the region so when I type it in the find region, it reports that it couldn't find it.
That's because of the way information in the game is stored (flat file system instead of a database). Partial matches and the like are harder to code, and take to long.

It either starts with the letter T or U, and browsing the entire region will take forever just to get to the alphabet or down from the Z's. Is there no way to split a regional search by alphabet or something?
It's already sorted by alphabet, it's just a matter of getting to the right page. I'll get to that in a second.

Or maybe even have an option to show all regions on one page so I can scroll through them all instead of waiting for each page to load.
This would take a very long time. There are at least a thousand pages if memory serves, and if you take the time that loading one of those pages takes to load and multpily it by 1000, you'll have a general idea how long this would take to download (and why it won't happen) :shock:

Perhaps the easiest thing that could be implemented is a jump to 700 out of 981 or however many pages there are. Where 700 would be user input.
And here you hit the nail on the head (or at least very close to it). You can do this, it just so happens, although more of as a side effect then an intentional implementation. The URL for the region listings looks something like:

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/page=list_regions/start=[number]

You can change the [number] and input that as the new URL, and use a guess-and-check method to find the region you are looking for.

And here you hit the nail on the head (or at least very close to it). You can do this, it just so happens, although more of as a side effect then an intentional implementation. The URL for the region listings looks something like:

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/page=list_regions/start=[number]

You can change the [number] and input that as the new URL, and use a guess-and-check method to find the region you are looking for.

[number] should equal (page - 1) * 15. So, if you want, say page 200 in the region listing, you'd use the value 2985 in place of [number].