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[mtg:Grafdigger's Cage] fails to find any cards. I've double-checked it a few times. I think it's something about the ' in the card name.

(This is very minor) [mtg:Sun Titan] takes you a search page with Sun Titan and Sundering Titan.

I'm not sure whether these are bugs on our part or limitations in the Gatherer interface we're using.

See this question for how this came up.

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3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

You'll notice similar problems on the Daily Magic website itself whenever apostrophes are involved. I believe it's something to do with either escaping or straight vs. curled apostrophes.

Edit: If it weren't for the authocard, it would be relatively easy to fix. Sun Titan returns

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=+[sun]+[titan]

If it were 

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=+[sun titan]

there would be no problem.

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up vote 1 down vote

Playing around with the autocard api, it doesn't look like we can fix this.

I'm forced to as the problem is on Wizards end, and I doubt they'll be addressing it. Every time we contact them we don't really get anywhere.

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It's their bug, but it seems like we can work around it while still respecting their terms and conditions. E.g. change http://www.wizards.com/magic/autocard.asp?name=Grafdigger%27s%20Cage to http://www.wizards.com/magic/autocard.asp?name=[Grafdigger%20Cage] – Alex P May 21 '12 at 20:47
2  
I ran into this today and it was particularly frustrating. To further to cause of getting this fixed, I compiled a list of all cards with an apostrophe or ampersand, with their appropriate multiverse-id, in the following pastebin: pastebin.com/5P6WbPiY Perhaps you could put those in a handy map and, if you get a match on them, link directly to the card instead of to the search page (assuming this isn't against their terms of service). Merry Christmas! :) – corsiKa Dec 24 '12 at 21:17
up vote 1 down vote

My best guesses from messing with Gatherer:

  • [mtg:Grafdigger's Cage] seems to be an issue with Gatherer itself, but it can be worked around on our side by stripping the link text -- basically kill any text between the ' and the next whitespace, so you submit "Grafdigger Cage" to the search script.
  • Circeus has an answer about what to do with [mtg:Sun Titan].

It looks like you can fix the apostrophe issue by just replacing %27 with %20 in the autocard links (and leave any floating characters just the way they are).

E.g. http://www.wizards.com/magic/autocard.asp?name=[Liliana%20s%20Specter]

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