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mczub / because-moe

anime streaming search engine
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Search not just by name but by platform #78

Open alanyee opened 6 years ago

alanyee commented 6 years ago

Most streaming services do not have great search or explore options for anime, so even if an anime show or movie is added to a given platform, finding that show or movie might be hard. Having the search engine simply list what anime shows or movies are available on an inquired platform would be interesting.

ldjb commented 6 years ago

Hi, this already works. For example: http://because.moe/?q=Crunchyroll

alanyee commented 6 years ago

Oh I see, though this kind of search only seems to work with whole words and not substrings nor words like "Prime" for "Amazon Prime". I feel like this kind of search can be improved upon.

ldjb commented 6 years ago

Ah, I can imagine people searching for "Prime" instead of the whole string. Then again, it raises the question of what to do if there ever were to be an anime with "Prime" in its name.

Being able to search a platform by substring may have unintended consequences. For example, someone searching for "Cru" might get results for Crunchyroll instead of Chrono Crusade.

I wonder if having a link to the Amazon Prime results appear if someone searches for "Prime" might work. Something similar could occur for other substrings.

alanyee commented 6 years ago

I think a better implementation would probably have the search bar only search anime titles by string, and search by the platform would be a separate thing such as having a list of platforms and selecting which ones you wanted to look at. This way, you can search by title and platform.

ldjb commented 6 years ago

I think some sort of list of platforms would be a good idea. As it is, it's difficult to know which platforms are supported without going through the list of anime and trying to spot each one.

That said, backwards compatibility is also desirable. There are a number of links to the search results for individual platforms that have been shared online. It might make sense to continue allowing users to search by platform via the search box to keep these links working (and not to confuse users as to why this functionality no longer works) in addition to providing some sort of list of platforms.