Presenting ACSavior, an app that does all the heavy lifting for DWRP activity checks automatically!
Hi! I'm the developer for this.
TLDR version: ACSavior is something you download, run, and punch in your RP comm name, and it creates a character activity report, with total comment counts and thread links.
I'm only commenting to appreciate your Hollow Knight display pic
THIS IS A VERY COOL APP
but also, A+ taste
it's super impressive. I've seen the reports
oops my internet died
WHAAAAAAAT THIS IS BANANAS
but it can't access private or 18+ locked content
i've tested this and it's incredibly cool and works super well!
Prof is a very smart cookie
this sounds amazing
and it won't find any activity from off of the community
and it won't read anything older than 90 days
holy shit
but it has options for converting posts into comments for AC comment counts, allowing or forbidding partial threads from before the AC period
I didn't get to play with it because I have a Mac, but Prof used my game to test the app on!
and a few other cool things
rep lurking this for all my buds with windows computers
This is in beta! I've just finished writing it and making sure everything works
There are no doubt some bugs or missing features that could make it even better
if you have any suggestions for new feature or questions or bug reports, send them to ACSavior
ohh is there a chance this could work in sites similar to dw? like ij?
now I need to hastily switch to that account and disable email notifs for replurks before I drown my entire inbox
Neat
good idea
I sadly don't have windows but this is a really cool thing
/reblubs
Ooooooh
Oh,
Oh my god,
ACSavior
says
NoeliaAileon: I'm afraid at present it doesn't work for any site other than Dreamwidth - IJ support is a possible future feature but it'll be a lot of work
This is so beautiful I want to cry
because IJ probably has a totally different HTML/CSS layout from DW
that's amazing... gj m8
Prof is good civilization
my dream is for this to allow at least some games to completely eliminate the necessity for players to report activity
holy shit???
Replurking because I think I have some folks who would love this. And damn if that isn't a cool thing, nice job!
oh warning - at least in an older test version, Avast pinged the app as potential malware, but I swear it's safe
all it does is send some GET requests to get HTML pages from Dreamwidth
I honestly don't know much about html or css so sadly I can't help there- but if it eventually gets there for IJ it would be awesome. Either way this is amazing, thank you so much for doing this!
it only does one request at a time, so it's not gonna flood the servers or anything either
If anyone wants to use this for their RP, please go ahead! And let me know how it goes.
this sounds amazing thank you very much for all your hard work!
nicely done!
Cool! Are you using curl and parsing or a different method?
It's written in C#, and uses HtmlAgilityPack to parse the request responses.
Whoaaaaa
It's not the most efficient app I've ever written, but it doesn't have to do too much
Ah cool. I'll have to take a look at that, since I'm more of a JAVA head.
Battler
is
it Open Source?
I do not currently plan to release the source code, because it'd be easy to edit it to be able to scan older content or non-RP communities, and I'm slightly concerned about privacy issues
Yeah, that's fair.
If games want to include IC Inboxes, overflow posts, etc, you can put the comm name in the Sources field, then after it put a link to each off-comm post on its own line.
It'll only accept off-comm posts, however, from journals that are marked as Roleplaying Journals.
and, again, not private posts.
ACSavior doesn't log in, so it can only access public content.
Augh I have a Mac, but this sounds super helpful!
Hey so this is really really fantastic and cool thank you so much!!!
I did some quick research and tools do exist for porting windows forms apps to Mac, so I'll look into it in the future!
Incredibly excited to try it out
o.o tiny question: if it can only access public content, how about locked logs or threads in locked comms?
it will not be able to access those! unfortunately, you'll still have to process those manually.
Wow, great job! That's really impressive
Interacting with DW's login system directly is 1. something I have no idea how to do and 2. very scary and I feel like I"d get in trouble for doing it
holy crap this is amazing
This would be super useful for Genessia!
i was like
why is it not working for me and it's because i have a mac LMAO but this is super cool!
prof has been working heckin hard on this all week it's lit
i thought i broke an application because my computer kept going
nope but no it's just because i can't read
It probably wouldn't be that bad, honestly. I've had to do some major site scraping in the past (I had to build a rest API on top of a tool that could only use curl and parsing to interact with a site), so if you want to get down to that, ping me.
Or one of our mutual friends. 
So on that end, even if we are not using the app ourselves, it'll still be helpful if we make sure to keep marking our journals as roleplaying journals, huh
Yay for future Mac version! Also I wonder if you could piggyback lj juggler for locked comms...
just so other people can be sure to find their activity using this app
Since it logs us in?
Says someone who knows 0 about coding and programming
wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooah
this is still as 'wooooah' as when prof first presented the idea
Replurking to save a life.
OH MY GOD THANK YOU???
Madness.
oh man this is amazing
i hopethere is a mac version eventually bc i would LOVE to use this
this is WICKED cool what the fuck, will give it a spin when im home on my pc!
Should we follow this plurk for updates on how to play God with AC reports?
Oh this is really cool.
yes, follow for updates!
All righty. Thanks.
tells avast i trust this and sits back with arms crossed
let me.......use the program
stop......locking it away
Yeah, Trend Micro doesn't like it either.
I'm gonna work on fixing that in the future if I can
windows forms is weird and prickly
anyway regarding ways to allow ACSavior to log in - that's something that, at the very least, I'd want to have a discussion with DW staff about before attempting
It looks like it only logs one comm's activity, even if you put them on separate lines.
In that order, minus the quotation marks.
Minus the profile bit on legionworld.
All the results I got were from the first comm only.
all right, thanks for the info - I'll test that this afternoon and see if I can find a reason
Would you like the output files?
this is an amazing things ;-;!
more than that, what would be good is if you could send me the contents of the file "default.sav"
I see it. I'll pop it on Mediafire now.
Thanks! It's a tiny plaintext file, so a plurk paste would also do the trick
Oh, plaintext? Lemme crack it open with Notepad++, then. Sorry, didn't know I could get in like that.
2
Months
False
5
True
False
legionworld | Recent Entries
thelegion | Recent Entries
thelegion | Recent Entries
Months
False
5
True
False
legionworld | Recent Entries
thelegion | Recent Entries
thelegion | Recent Entries
thank you!
I'll hopefully get back to you about this in about 7 hours
No rush. I mean, I could just plug in each community one at a time, so this definitely still works.
so it does still work if you put them in individually?
Yes.
Only if I do them in a group does it have an issue.
huh, all right, it's at least a bug with a workaround then
avast really does not want me using this /screams slowly
I'll try to fix the antivirus ping thing before my next release
Wwwoiooooaaahhhh
Oh, most of my rp comms aren't marked as such. That explains a lot.
yup, you have to mark the comms as RP
otherwise people would be able to do mild stalkery shit with it on non-RP communities
To fix Avast's issue: go to the settings, then exclusions. Add the ACSavior folder to the file path tab, and it should open the next time you click the app!
oh cool, there's a workaround!
thanks
I'll still try to get it properly signed though
What pops up says they're sending it somewhere to get checked out, so it's possible Avast might just add it to a list of okay software at some point
one suggestion I have, I see that you have a "up until" date, is there a way to put in a date to start from too?
like i wanted my threads from November 1st until November 30th
i think that's the amount of time
it's a month up until november 30th
I was debating whether or not it'd be easier to just ask the user to input the start and end dates directly
yeah but i mean if I wanted november ONLY stuff
yeah I think it'd be less counting on the user's end if they could pick a start and end date
with the current UI if you run it on the last day of the month it'll always get you the full month's AC
but I think you're probably right
it's cleaner that way
yeah, especially with February being a weird amount of days
ProfessorProf: it seems to be defaulting to the profile page when i try to put in https:// entranceway(dot)dreamwidth(dot)org . Should I be adding something to the end so it's looking at the entries?
it always loads the profile page first in order to verify that it's a roleplay account
(I keep clicking recent entries on the page but it won't give me anything to work with :T)
it should load the entries after that
in the readout it's changed the url to the /profile one and says there's no entries
this is if i put the full url in or just the username
entranceway isn't marked as a roleplaying community
hmm, can you send me the contents of the default.sav file?
--ah, that'd do it
You can set that in account settings -> display
oh. weird
I always contemplated this project, but then was like 'whatever good docs is fine' good on you for being more motivated than me
i'm not a mod but i'll pass that on to them when i send this to them <3
I'll make the log output more clear about what happened in that case if I can
but there should be a line in there saying something like "Skipping source - entranceway is not a roleplay account"
OH yeah it does say that
sorry i didn't even see it
does dreamwidth work differently for comms marked as rp?
it doesn't, but I added that check to prevent people from using this to trawl real-people activity on non-RP communities
for privacy reasons
Yay, it's released!
Also I'm the one who pointed out the RP community marker could be used instead of checking each individual poster in the community!
oh, that's much better yeah
leaning in here to say - DW's login system is actually quite easy to interact with, and the ryslig activity verifier uses that regularly. unfortunately i didn't go this in-depth when writing the scraper since i was worried about sending a large number of pings investigating all threads
if you don't mind me asking - does it just expand all posts within a date range and scrape the responses from the html, or is there a way around manually getting all posts?
that is exactly what it does, yep
I'm confident that I could add login if I wanted, I'd just really want to get an OK from DW first
gotcha! i guess that's actually not a terrible number of pings for most communities, since if it's being done on an "entire comm" basis it only pings each one once
thanks for making this o7
I saw 
ALTHOUGH I am not sure what rating the mods put the comm at :T
ALTHOUGH I am not sure what rating the mods put the comm at :T
o.o Holy shit! Testing this out.
Oh man. Might have to try this?
Quick check-- and apologies if it's mentioned somewhere else; I ctrl+f'd the plurk, but didn't read in depth. How do you mark something as a roleplay account for the purposes of this app?
It's under the display tab in account settings
notglitching: Go into the account settings, under Display tab, and then look for the checkbox next to Roleplaying Account?
Got it! Much thanks.
Awesome. But let Mac users in too
Sharn's here! That means I don't have to worry about asking for Sav to be marked as RP
And please can you update it so it works on IJ too?
Working on it-- I was gonna test drive the stuff on my journal first.
Quick check-- what login (browser?) does it use to check for activity? I'm logged into one account on Firefox and another on Chrome; it's not picking up activity where I think it should, but that might be an account mixup.
ChicagoMel: They've already said they're working on it, it's not a simple cut and past job, be patient.
Ok sounds good
texelations: Log and network communities should be marked now, if you want to test it there!
I'm curious, if IJ and DW are the same source, why is IJ harder?
notglitching: i'm not prof but it does not use any kind of login system or browser interaction, so if it's not getting activity where you think it should, it's something completely different
"Windows application" lmao damn it I need to replace my stupid mac 
ChicagoMel: Both IJ and DW were based off 2008's open source of LJ software, but they've both made divergent changes since then
Oh ok
i also don't know if insanejournal has an equivalent of the "this is a rp journal" setting so that'd reopen that whole can of privacy worms
IJ support and Mac support are both on the future features list, please look forward to them
estrapade: Good to know! How is it meant to identify tags from your character versus other characters, then?
(Again, apologies if I'm missing something obvious.)
once I figure out what work is required and how feasible they are
ACSavior is meant to be run by the mods, not by the players!
It gets everyone's activity
....OH
notglitching: it just looks at journals
well then 
I don't see why you couldn't use it to gather your own AC though, if you wanted to
you could, you'd just run it and then ctrl+f for "Activity for {journal}"
OH
Looks fantastic! Would there be a way to calibrate it to include backtags as well? I notice threads on posts before the inclusion date aren't counted, even if comments (or entire threads) did happen within that time period.
though if you run your journal, it'll give you all the comments you've posted to a journal marked as an RP account
I did a test of that this morning with one of mine
it should be automatically checking for backtags up to 2 weeks prior to the AC period
where is the "this is an RP account" setting?
Account Settings -> Display
Under "Display"
:|a Might be a flaw? I ran it for "a month prior to 11-15", and backtags on a log posted 10-7 didn't show up.
aha, ok
notglitching can you paste me the contents of default.sav? I'll look into it after work
and also a link to the thread it should have picked up but didn't
thank you
I can't use this, but it may help other people.
Shall do!
If mods want to do it for the community, they'll need to change what account they're editing for first:
I'll add that to the FAQ
I already keep obsessive track of my own AC but tbh this kind of thing sounds like a miracle program so thank you for all your hard work!
- scratch that, must've been a glitch frmoo this morning because I can't get it to work again.
ITS TOO DOPE I CANT COPE
sorry if I've been occasionally slow to reply in here, I've had meetings
The threads in question were all sub-headers of blank starters made a week before the period. And this was without the "partial threads alowed" checkbox.
So-- if the program's supposed to scan for 2-week old backtags regardless of that checkbox, it might be a concern? But otherwise, it's doing great. (And seems to be picking up older backtags than 2 weeks with the box checked.)
Thanks a ton for setting this up-- and all the troubleshooting!
ah yeah, the app counts subheaders as threads
so it wouldn't spot them unless partial threads were enabled
Makes perfect sense!
I'm nnnnot sure offhand how to fix that, since from an HTML perspective subheaders and comments are identical
This looks so nice! I have a mac though, so I'll have to wait.
Hrmmmmm
LJ juggler is not actually working for me on DW right now and I know I'm not alone although there are people it does still work for
You don't gotta log in to use this.
Question-- how far back does it search if you do enable partial threads? I tested with making a new tag on a long-ago post, and it doesn't seem to have registered, but I'm not sure whether that's because it's outside some window or because I just commented.
It goes up to 2 weeks back from the start of the period.
...huh! I'm pretty sure it picked up some stuff older than that, at least on my search.
can you send me the default.sav contents?
Sure; give me one sec to make sure it's on the right search.
(Also a lot of others, probably-- that was just the first example that I spotted.)
Thanks! I'll look into it after work
Much appreciated! Would it be possible in future builds to have an adjustable option for how far back it searches for backtags?
(No pressure if it's hard; what you've made is fantastic-- just curious for the inclusion of longer-term backtags.)
Yeah, I could add that
You kick ass.
Ohhhh shit I’ve been wondering for months why someone hadnt made something like this already
Do you have a kofi or PayPal donation link?
thank you! i support anything that makes it easier on mods so... this is pretty nifty.
yup, 90 day limit
...hmm. okay, i gave it a run on another rp comm that is currently active, and it's still throwing no results. 
send me default.sav and I'll look into it
i'm assuming i'm making a cock-up somewhere in this since it works fine for everyone else
1
Months
False
3
False
False
spellbind | a magic world hopping rpg | main
thanks
This is why betas are a thing, I guess
ok i ran through a url that someone higher up in this plurk used to test and that didn't throw any results either.
so it's something on my end
The link works for me, for what it's worth?
+1 to spellbinders as a source working for me too
very strange...
:|a
what did y'all do to deal with antivirus, specifically
(i went into avast and told it to exclude the folder containing the exe and all its stuff)
I use Trend Micro, so I just told it to open it anyway.
oh hey there we go
i just redownloaded it and now it works
HUH
what a mystery
oh it's done
.....oh this is rad
Yeah, it took my laptop two minutes to compile your stuff. Spellbound must be busy
40 secs on mine. damn that report is nice
this isss awesomeeeee
I am very computer illiterate, so forgive this question, but I assume this means it doesn't work with Ubuntu
𝐎𝐡, 𝐉𝐨
is
it only for Windows?
for now yes
Somehow it says it's missing required files for me :/
holy fuck it's beautiful
Damn sir, but you do the lord's work around here. 
notglitching: The thread you linked was from 10/16, and the period is 10/15 to 11/15, so it looks like it's working correctly.
One downside of Ubuntu, I suppose
sadness
ProfessorProf: I think I miscommunicated my concern! I had been asking how long before the search period it looked to find old threads. You said two weeks, but I was confused because those comments were on a post/larger-thread from three weeks beforehand (September 24/26 depending on if it checks post or thread).
So-- it's working fine, and I'm glad for that. I was just curious about the range of time it searched in, since it did seem to pick up tags on three-week-old posts, but not on some older ones.
OH I see
Can you screencap me the error you're getting?
sure
notglitching: I checked the code, and it turns out what I said isn't QUITE right - TLDR it will always get backthreads from up to 2 weeks back, posts older than that are hit or miss
once it reaches the end of a page on the comm entries page, if the last post on the list is under 2 weeks past the AC period, then it'll get another page of entries
That makes sense! Details appreciated.
SO, I need a volunteer who had Avast issues with this app to test a possible fix!
moi.
i can switch off the exception
Mind if I PM you?
ALSO: Thank you very much, whoever gave me those donations!
:Ta I get an error message every time I try to use
the app (hit enter too fast)
can you give me the error?
yeah one sec let me recreate it
Unhandled exception has occurred in your application. If you click Continue, the application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. If you click Quit, the application will close immediately.Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
hmmmm
can you get me the contents of default.sav?
Hmm... Unfortunately, I'm not able to reproduce the error, but I've also made a few changes to the code since the release.
I'll add some better error handling and hope for the best.
That sounds like a really cool app
respendentri: What causes the error? Clicking the Process button?
should I delete and redownload?
yeah, it just loads for like 1-2 minutes and then the error window pops up
Does it show anything in the logs field under the button, or does it just crash?
it says Loading URL: theairlock | Recent Entries and then when I hit continue it says-
hold on i have to recreate it again
Loading URL: theairlock - Community Profile
Failed to load URL theairlock - Community Profile A task was canceled.
Failed to load URL theairlock - Community Profile A task was canceled.
Interesting
it sounds like the call is timing out
hm
About how long would you say it's hanging before the timeout?
uhhhh
/pulls out stop watch
development like this is such a beautiful thing.
minute and 40 seconds
pretty long, then... hrm.
I"m not sure what would make it take that long.
This is so nice and might save me from my current complicated mess with Evernote and Gmail notifs.
Did you do anything particular re: antivirus checks when downloading it?
Something could be blocking it, I guess
I did notice that I didn't get an antivirus popup
Windows itself tried to be like "mmm, maybe not"
hrm
I'm super sorry but I'm stumped on this one 
All I can suggest is to wait for the next release, in the next couple days.
All I can suggest is to wait for the next release, in the next couple days.
no problem! So should I delete and redownload in a couple days?
I'll make a new plurk about it - the download link will be different.
The Bugged Out
will
it work like a patch and just save over the old version?
Yeah.
...Maybe.
It depends on how things go with clearing up the antivirus false positives.
haha if not I'll figure out how to get the updated one
All the info will be in the plurk when it happens
Okay so!
If someone who ran into Avast/etc issues while running the above version
It's experimental and I don't know if it will work at all
but try running setup.exe, then ACSavior.application
Trend Micro thinks that your setup.exe file is a virus.
all right, throwing out that plan
god, why the hell is it reading as a virus
Not a virus, a 'suspicious file'. Sorry. Poor wording on my part.
either way, the publish process didn't fix the problem
research doesn't suggest htmlagilitypack being flagged and it's the only third party library I'm using
Neo Quinn
is
it just because the app makes HTTP requests...
I think I may just have to hope that Avast eventually decides it's clean
I don't think I can readily fix it
Trend at least gives me the 'open file' option, but yeah. It's looking like either you'll have to ask Avast and hope for an answer or just wait.
As far as I know Avast requires a large number of people to mark something safe before it won't flag something
I wanted to try out Verve Painter a few years ago and Avast quarantined it without letting me even try to open it
Hmm, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong... 
...Somehow just typing in the name of the comm didn't occur to me. It's nifty that it works.
HMM, I ran with that input and it created a report...
dormiveglia could you run it again with verbose logging enabled?
trying now!
Loading URL: riverview - Community Profile
Failed to load URL riverview - Community Profile A task was canceled.
An error occurred while processing activity: Object reference not set to an instance of an object..
Abandoning activity check.
Time elapsed: 100.0191827 seconds.
Failed to load URL riverview - Community Profile A task was canceled.
An error occurred while processing activity: Object reference not set to an instance of an object..
Abandoning activity check.
Time elapsed: 100.0191827 seconds.
bummer!
OK, some research suggests that what's likely happening is that the call is timing out
I think someone else ran into a similar issue and had some success with reinstalling the app
unfortunately that's something very hard to debug, since it's unique to the user's run environment
Ohhh!
it might also be related to your computer flagging it as malware and blocking it from making outgoing HTTP requests
Using the new version (and after making my computer make an exception for ACSavior) I got this error
Sorry plurk paste was being weird
that.... is fascinating
why is it listing its location on my computer
I assume that's not the directory you downloaded it into
Nope!
hmm
that's not even the directory it's in on my computer, it's the directory the version from like five versions ago was sitting on but has since been deleted
what are your install steps here? download -> unzip into empty directory -> run?
Yep!
I mean I unzipped it and left it on my destop
desktop
all right, doing some research
can you do me a solid and see what happens if you run it after moving "ACSavior.pdb" out of the app folder?
Sure! One sec
hmm, all right
I think it's probably best for me to leave it at that in future pushes
anyway, the issue still appears to be a call timeout
did you get any sort of alert from antivirus on the app?
None!
what version of windows are you running?
all right, well, I did some research and found something that *might( be a fix for this issue
do you want me to ping you when I release the next version?
It's okay, I'm following you
I'll keep an eye out, thanks so much for your hard work!