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fabacab / fetlife-aslsearch

Greasemonkey user script offering an interface to perform pseudo-automatic searches of the FetLife.com user base filtered by age, sex, location, and role.
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FetLife Age/Sex/Location Search (Extended Edition)

The FetLife Age/Sex/Location Search user script allows you to search for profiles on FetLife by age, sex, location, sexual role, sexual orientation, profile bio (a user's "About Me" section), listed fetishes, what they've entered for "Looking For," and much, much more. This user script implements and then extends what is, as of this writing, the most popular suggestion in the FetLife suggestion box:

Search for people by Location/Sex/Orientation/Age

Increase the detail of the kinkster search by allowing us to narrow the definition of the search by the traditional fields.

With the FetLife Age/Sex/Location Search user script installed, a few clicks will save hours of time. Now you can find profiles that match your specified criteria in a matter of seconds. The script even lets you send a message to the profiles you found right from the search results list.

This edition of the FetLife A/S/L Search script is an enhanced, extended version with full support for all genders and designed in a way that makes it immune to FetLife's recent automatic banhammer.

FetLife A/S/L Search (Extended Edition) is the easiest, fastest, and safest way to search profiles on FetLife. It's ad-free and free-of-charge. The code is open source and the service is maintained solely by donations. If you like this script, consider donating to support me in making continued improvements. But even if you don't donate, you'll still be able to use every feature, forever, 'cause that's how I roll.

System requirements

The following software must be installed on your system before installing the FetLife Age/Sex/Location Search user script.

Mozilla Firefox

If you use the Mozilla Firefox web browser (version 12.0 or higher), ensure you have the Greasemonkey extension installed (at version 1.0 or higher).

Google Chrome

If you use the Google Chrome web browser (version 23 or higher), ensure you have the Tampermonkey extension installed.

Installing

To install FetLife Age/Sex/Location Search, go to https://maybemaimed.com/playground/fetlife-aslsearch/ and click the "Download and install" near the middle of the page:

Download and install FetLife Age/Sex/Location Search

If you enjoy this script, please consider tossing a few metaphorical coins in my cyberbusking hat. :) Your donations are sincerely appreciated! Can't afford to part with any coin? It's cool. Tweet your appreciation, instead.

If maybemaimed.com is censored where you are, you can alternatively go to the GreasyFork.org page for FetLife Age/Sex/Location Search and click on "Install this script". If the script is also unavailable at GreasyFork.org, you can download and install it directly from GitHub.com.

Using

To use FetLife Age/Sex/Location Search, log in to your FetLife.com account and click the "A/S/L?" checkbox in the top navigation bar, near the Search box.

Screenshot of modified FetLife toolbar with the "A/S/L?" add-on installed.

The "Extended A/S/L search" tab will appear:

Screenshot of the "Extended A/S/L search" tab with all its panels closed.

In the "Extended A/S/L search" tab, there are four panels that you can open to modify your search criteria. You can ignore any panel you don't care about. Clicking a panel name will expand it to reveal the options within. For example, clicking on "Search by Age/Sex/Location" will allow you to select search criteria for age, gender/sex, location, sexual orientation, and/or sexual role. Click on the "Help" buttons to the right of any option or panel to view a pop-over with additional instructions. Clicking anywhere outside the pop-over will close the help text again.

Screenshot of help text explaining how to choose an age range.

To expand the search interface, click the "Enlarge" button at the top-left of the FetLife A/S/L Search options. The button will move to the top-left of your browser window, the search interface will expand to fit the available space, and the button's text will change to "Close FetLife A/S/L Search." Clicking on it again will return you to the FetLife page you were browsing.

When you've selected your search criteria, click "Search." The search panels will disappear and a progress bar will appear. When the progress bar turns green, the first batch of your search request is complete and you will be presented with a sortable table that displays profile avatars, nicknames, and any other account information relevant to your search. To view additional information about a profile, click the green plus button (+) to the left of the user's nickname.

Screenshot of search result.

Due to the sheer number of profiles FetLife A/S/L Search (Extended) is able to search and the speed with which it can do so, results are both batched and paged. If your search query returns many results, you will see a pagination control at the bottom of the search results table that will allow you to page through the batch. You can also filter the batch using the "Filter results batch" text field at the top-right of the table. After the first result batch is presented to you, the "Search" button becomes a "Show batch number 2" button. Clicking on it again requests the second batch from your search.

To start a new search, click the "Reset" button.

Frequently Asked Questions

Before you report a new issue with FetLife Age/Sex/Location Search, please check to ensure your question is not already addressed in the list below.

Can I search in a location other than my own city, state, or country?

Yes. The original FetLife Age/Sex/Location Search didn't provide an interface for you to choose a location directly, but this Extended Edition does. However, the location fields can be tricky for some. They are case-sensitive and the value you enter is matched against only one location field (either city, state/province, or country). This means you can only search for one of these at a time.

For example, say you want to find profiles listed as being in "Baltimore, Maryland, United States." The best way to search for this location is to enter Baltimore in the location text box. Notice the proper capitalization! Similarly, if you want to find profiles of anyone in the State of Maine, enter Maine and again pay attention to proper capitalization. This may also return some results of profiles listed as being in a city named "Maine," but hopefully you can put up with a tiny bit of imperfection. I may be able to fix this issue in a future version of this script, so be sure to keep your script updated.

I used this script and FetLife banned my account. What gives?

You're probably confusing this script with a different FetLife ASL Search script. There are a huge number of copy-cat scripts out on the Web, and many of them are unable to search stealthily. This script is immune from FetLife's auto-ban because the way it works remains 100% invisible to FetLife.

For some reason, FetLife decided to start automatically banning accounts that they suspect use tools they disapprove of even if those tools make your FetLife experience more of what you want it to be. They do this by trying to detect add-ons that "crawl" their website, that is, tools that load many pages at once. FetLife A/S/L Search (Extended Edition) is undetectable by FetLife because it doesn't load any pages you don't. Unlike the many immitations of this script, FetLife A/S/L Search (Extended) does not crawl FetLife and so using it is completely safe.

If you're still using the old, original version of this script or installed one that a lot of other folks copied, however, your account may have been banned for "crawling" even if you weren't actually crawling. (FetLife's detection system just makes a best-guess, they're not exactly very sophisticated.) The good news is that if you email the FetLife carebears you might be able to convince them to reactivate your account. It's important that you insist you were not using any unapproved tools to increase your chances of getting your account reactivated.

FetLife A/S/L Search (Extended Edition) also includes a "Classic (slow) search" mode. Using that mode is generally discouraged because the Extended mode is faster and safer. But if you do insist on using the old "crawler" search method, this script includes an "Online search speed: Wait X seconds per page" option that lets you control how quickly your search proceeds. The higher (more stealthy) you set this value, the safer your account, but the slower your searches will be.

Is this legal? Will I get in trouble for using this?

FetLife A/S/L Search (Exteded Edition) is completely legal and safe to use.

Still, in a trigger-happy legal environment where people eagerly sue over spilled milk, it's hard to say. IANAL, but the way this script works is actually pretty simple: it just cooperates with other copies of itself! No part of this tool involves malicious hacking, cracking, or theft. The code for the script itself is public domain (it's not even copyrighted), the information it uses is all fair-use, and the tool as a whole is what the sometimes trigger-happy people in suits call a "transformative work." (Look it up.)

FetLife has historically been very quick to mis-use the law for illegal purposes, and there's no telling whether they'll do the same again. But even so, the chances of you getting in trouble is slim to none. Hell, I've been targeted by FetLife's lawyers for years for a bunch of other stuff and I'm still just fine. :P

That said, since this script is public domain, it's entirely use-at-your-own-risk. There's no warranty or customer service or anything like that, but I'll happily refund the $0 you paid for it. ;)

Change log

Versions of this script prior to 0.4 are considered deprecated and unsafe to use.