Archived Caches

ian-and-penny · Post by **ian-and-penny** » 08 November 04 7:44 pm

Hi All,

How can I run a pocket query (or series of them) in order to determine which caches in my GSAK database have become archived?

Any Type>Any Container>That is not active>Within State Victoria . . .etc does not collect them all.

Regards

Ian

TEAM LANDCRUISER · Post by **TEAM LANDCRUISER** » 08 November 04 7:56 pm

I may be wrong guy's but I'm pretty sure there's no way to run a pocket query on archived caches as GC.com doesn't recognise archived caches ... sure I read that on the US forum somewhere awhile ago.Someone will correct me if wrong

Cheers TLC

swampgecko · Post by **swampgecko** » 08 November 04 7:59 pm

I don't think you can do it.

I was making a list of archived caches of NSW, but they finally removed my reviewer access just days after starting it, short of maybe politely asking one of the reviewers to make a query on your behalf (which I personally DO NOT recommend, as they both are busy people), maybe if we start a thread - a pinned thead - in each state asking for geocachers to list or to email you the gpx files of archived caches...

just a thought

maccamob · Post by **maccamob** » 08 November 04 8:05 pm

AFAIK, Pocket Queries do not include archived caches, only active and disabled ones. The best way I've found so far to identify the archived caches in your database is to upload the latest of each of your pocket queries, then sort your GSAK database on the 'Last Updated' field. You can safely assume that any caches with a "Last Updated' date before the dates of your last queries have been archived. You can then manually 'Toggle the Cache Archive Status' in GSAK for those caches. This method is a bit laborious, but it's also foolproof. If you mistakenly 'archive' a cache, the next PQ you load will fix it. Otherwise, if there aren't a lot of probable archived caches in question, you can check each of them on-line to make sure.

Webguy · Post by **Webguy** » 08 November 04 10:28 pm

I had exactly the same question, and Riblit showed me this trick...

In GSAK, sort all your caches by last updated, the vast majority will have the same date, IE, the last time you did a full GPX update.

Now, in 99.9% of cases, any cache that has not been updated, is probably offline/archived.

I tried it, it was 100% right for me.

I then visited each one by double clicking to bring up the online page, downloaded and processed the single gpx files for each one and now I am up-to-date. This saw me with another 30-40 archived ones that were not marked as such in GSAK.

Team Red Roo · Post by **Team Red Roo** » 09 November 04 2:23 pm

Maccamob and Riblit are correct (AFAIK), in this being the only way to update GSAK, but I don't think that it is good enough for geo.com to archive a cache without letting us know about it.
I've emailled them today with a new request and several constructive suggestions, on how they might possibly go about it, and at the same time keep processing time down.
I'll post the reply on this thread when I receive one.
Wayne

Webguy · Post by **Webguy** » 09 November 04 2:28 pm

Perhaps Clyde can add something to GSAK to scrape this info direct off the gc.com website pages?

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 09 November 04 2:36 pm

Webguy wrote:Perhaps Clyde can add something to GSAK to scrape this info direct off the gc.com website pages?

That's not a good idea. gc.com are a bit touchy about page scraping.

ideology · Post by **ideology** » 09 November 04 3:01 pm

we can produce an automated list of archived caches
does someone know how they could be imported into GSAK?

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 09 November 04 3:32 pm

ideology wrote:we can produce an automated list of archived caches
does someone know how they could be imported into GSAK?

If it looks like a gpx file exported from GSAK it should import as normal.
Maybe produce somethng and send it to Clyde?

teamkittens · Post by **teamkittens** » 09 November 04 3:35 pm

ideology wrote:we can produce an automated list of archived caches
does someone know how they could be imported into GSAK?

Hmm a smell a possible feature for GSAK/gc.com.au

gc.com.au could generate a simple xml page with just a list of all known archived caches.

GSAK can then have an option where it goes and grabs that page and checks the current database to see if any of the caches in it are in the list, if so it marks them as archived/disabled or whatever it may be.

Mind Socket · Post by **Mind Socket** » 09 November 04 4:18 pm

I like the sound of the list from gc.com.au solution, but I think the same logic could be built into GSAK, although it's really not far off already (you can toggle archived in bulk after applying an "updated since" filter I believe).

It pays to be wary if you don't always load the same PQ, or if your parameters change. For example, "All of NSW" loaded on Oct 1, then one starts loading "Nearest 100km" instead after that. One might accidentally archive the caches outside 100km just because they stopped getting imported. Even more problematic, and likely, is having a PQ that returns the maximum 500 caches. As more caches are planted, more caches drop off the end of the PQ and may be incorrectly inferred as archived.

- Rog

ideology · Post by **ideology** » 09 November 04 4:59 pm

here's a gpx file of archived caches: http://geocaching.com.au/gpx/archived.gpx

comments:

the secondary site doesn't like to publish lists of archived caches, so we've had to guess them. the algorithm we use is that if a cache disappears for a couple of days, it's probably been archived. this is quite dodgy, but it's better than nothing. if the cache reappears at any time, it's counted as unarchived.
apparently the reasoning behind not publishing a list of archived caches was that sometimes the secondary site tells a landowner that a cache has been deleted. so, in this spirit, we've only included the waypoint code, ie no coords, etc. this should be enough to wash against your data to flag the caches as archived. (sadly, the GPX specification doesn't allow for waypoints without coordinates, so we've had to include coordinates but set them to zero.)
we'd like to put in the archived="yes" tag but it's in the secondary site's private namespace. if we publish more gpx files we will probably use the opencaching namespace provided we can figure out what it is!
we've tested importing this into gsak, but have no clue about how to merge these with another database and flag the caches as deleted. perhaps clyde can help out here!

let us know how it goes and whether it's useful
- i!

Blaze_au · Post by **Blaze_au** » 09 November 04 6:44 pm

Perhaps Clyde can add something to GSAK to scrape this info direct off the gc.com website pages?

I did ask Clyde about a macro to do just this but he doesn't think gc.com will take kindly to it.

I beleive the solution has to come from gc.com, not from us sorting through each cache that hasn't been updated recently on our pocket queries.

Speaking of gc.com, I am still waiting from them to get back to me about my subscription enquiry.. time for a follow up.

ian-and-penny · Post by **ian-and-penny** » 11 November 04 12:27 pm

Thanks All,

The Maccamob (et al) solution worked for me.

Regards

Ian