Which caches has my friend found

[+HMS Terror]

I've made a list of caches for my friend and I to find. I have found 40 caches in my caching career, and she has found 8,999.

 

Is there a way I can determine if she's already found some of the caches on the list I've made?

 

I could manually visit each cache log and pour through the log a page at a time, looking for her name.

 

Is there a better way?

 

I'm thinking if I could generate a list of her cache finds, sort by name, then compare my list to her list. Is there a tool or a site that provides that kind of functionality? I can manipulate the list, if I can get the raw data.

 

Is there some other way to accomplish this goal?

 

For my list of 82 caches, I need to know if she has found any of them. How can I do this???

[+palmetto]

Search has a field for Not Found By - where you can enter up to 5 usernames.

[+HMS Terror]

Search has a field for Not Found By - where you can enter up to 5 usernames.

Thanks, I just tried it. It works, after a fashion. +1 for the idea!

 

I added her name to the 'Not Found by' filter and searched on a cache I know she has found. Results were returned, and the cache I searched for was NOT included, so I know that works. It's cumbersome and slow, but does work. I tried the inverse of this and searched on a cache I know she has NOT found, and it was first on the list of returned results.

 

I'm hoping to find a better way. Searching 80 caches this way will be tedious and time consuming. Is there a better, more efficient way?

[+TriciaG]

You have a list of caches, and you want to know if she has found them? There isn't an easy way.

 

I say, go to her profile page, and click on all her found caches. (Pull up the list of the caches she has found.) Sort these - it'd be nice if you could sort by name or GC code, but I don't think you can. Sorting by placed date will be close to sorting by GC code, though.

 

Then sort your list of 80 caches the same way.

 

Then compare the two lists.

[+Team Taran]

Don't search individual caches. Go to the new search page select a center point. Select add search filters. Scroll down to not found by add your caching name and that of your friend. It will return caches neither of you have found. If your friend caches regularly in the area you are searching you may not get many hits.

[+lee737]

Project GC - 'Map Compare' tool can do this, for the reason you want....

A map where you can compare your finds with others. A helpful tool if you want to plan a route together with a friend.

[+HMS Terror]

You have a list of caches, and you want to know if she has found them? There isn't an easy way.

Ain't that the truth! I'm trying many things, so far there hasn't been a whiz-bang solution.

 

I say, go to her profile page, and click on all her found caches. (Pull up the list of the caches she has found.) Sort these - it'd be nice if you could sort by name or GC code, but I don't think you can. Sorting by placed date will be close to sorting by GC code, though.

 

Then sort your list of 80 caches the same way.

 

Then compare the two lists.

 

This is where I started. The major - perhaps only - obstacle with this is the site present cache finds one page at a time. Her list is 449 pages. And you are correct, there is no sorting by cache - but I could get around that easily enough if I could have the entire list handed to me.

 

I find geocaching to be a fun activity, I don't find the major website of geocaching to provide anything more than the very basic of tools.

[+HMS Terror]

Don't search individual caches. Go to the new search page select a center point. Select add search filters. Scroll down to not found by add your caching name and that of your friend. It will return caches neither of you have found. If your friend caches regularly in the area you are searching you may not get many hits.

This is another good idea and it seems to work - to a degree. I searched for all the caches in our state that neither of us has found, and by the number returned, that seems to work. I tend to believe the results, but it returned 20,713 results.

 

Ok, fair enough. Now I could take that list and sort it and extract just the 80ish caches I'm looking for, to confirm she hasn't found them. BUT, again, the tool only provides me a screenful of results at at time. If I could get all the results to load, or have the option to download a text file of the results, I would be set.

 

So close!!

 

Some right ideas in this thread, but the website does not seem to offer quite the functionality I need for my goal.

[+TriciaG]

I say, go to her profile page, and click on all her found caches. (Pull up the list of the caches she has found.) Sort these - it'd be nice if you could sort by name or GC code, but I don't think you can. Sorting by placed date will be close to sorting by GC code, though.

 

Then sort your list of 80 caches the same way.

 

Then compare the two lists.

 

This is where I started. The major - perhaps only - obstacle with this is the site present cache finds one page at a time. Her list is 449 pages. And you are correct, there is no sorting by cache - but I could get around that easily enough if I could have the entire list handed to me.

 

I find geocaching to be a fun activity, I don't find the major website of geocaching to provide anything more than the very basic of tools.

I think if you had the sorted cache placement date on your original list, that it would help you go through her list of found caches also sorted that way. You wouldn't necessarily have to look at every page, but jump down to around where the next cache placement date is.

 

It's definitely not ideal.

[+HMS Terror]

Project GC - 'Map Compare' tool can do this, for the reason you want....

A map where you can compare your finds with others. A helpful tool if you want to plan a route together with a friend.

Another not bad idea, but the results here are incomplete and at the same time overkill.

 

Incomplete in that I get this error message: "A limit of 10000 was hit, narrow your search down a bit."

 

Overkill in that the results are returned plotted on a map - this is too much for my needs. I am only trying to confirm she has not cached anything on this list I've made.

 

Sigh. I'm not giving up yet, but it's not looking good at the moment!

Edited June 26, 2017 by HMS Terror

[+HMS Terror]

I think if you had the sorted cache placement date on your original list, that it would help you go through her list of found caches also sorted that way. You wouldn't necessarily have to look at every page, but jump down to around where the next cache placement date is.

 

Yes, I see what you are saying. Then I could skip ahead pages at a time looking for specific hide dates. On her results, I can sort by the date the cache was initially hidden. I could also gather that same data for my target list of 80 caches. Then it would be a simple matter of comparing the hide date on my short list of 80 against her big list of 8,999. Where there is no match, she has not found that particular cache.

 

Kludgy, but so far the best answer - quickest and easiest being best

 

I'm trying one more thing yet, and waiting for the results. There is something called a Pocket Query, and there is a type of pocket query called My Finds. I'm running that now for me and my 41 finds, so I'll see what kind of data it generates. Ideally I'm looking for a simple list of caches, and if that's what I get I can ask her to run the same query and send me the results. Of course she'll ask why and I won't tell her, but she'll do it anyway! Fingers crossed that the My Find pocket query gives me the data for which I am looking.

[+HMS Terror]

RESOLVED!

 

The quick answer is the My Find pocket query, available at https://www.geocaching.com/pocket, about half way down the page, in the "Active Pocket Queries" tab, simply click on "Add to queue". It takes time to run, so be patient. Mine took about 20 minutes.

 

The result is a compressed (zip) file in .gpx format - but don't let that fool you, it's simply plain text xml. All the data I'm looking for is in there, it will be on me to extract it and that is something I can do.

 

The longer answer is I will have my friend run this - I can't run it against her profile, I can only run it on mine. She'll send me the resulting zip file and I'll have an up-to-the-minute list of all her 8,999 finds.

 

I can quickly scan that file for the 80ish caches I have on my list and remove duplicates - the result will be all new caches for both of us to find.

 

Ta-da!

 

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and ideas - all good, but I think this solution suits this particular need best.

[+lee737]

Quickly scan her list of 9000 finds? Better you than me!

[+HMS Terror]

Quickly scan her list of 9000 finds? Better you than me!

Heehee, I'll automate it!

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Quickly scan her list of 9000 finds? Better you than me!

Heehee, I'll automate it!

 

Yep. It would take me less than an hour to write program which compares GPX files and spits out a list of GC codes neither has found. I'd be surprised if someone hasn't done it before. Someone probably has but just hasn't shared it on GitHub (hint, hint).

[+hzoi]

I'm a little late to the party on this, but the Map Compare tool on project-gc.com can display caches found by both of you, one of you, or neither of you. Map compare is one of the features that are only available to paying members, but that site has many other tools on it that may be worth your while.

[+HMS Terror]

Yep. It would take me less than an hour to write program which compares GPX files and spits out a list of GC codes neither has found. I'd be surprised if someone hasn't done it before. Someone probably has but just hasn't shared it on GitHub (hint, hint).

Well, I just scripted it so I'd have to clean it up quite a bit Here it is, in all its down and dirty glory:

 

#!/bin/bash
#27-jun-2017
#script to compare proposed list of caches against known found caches.

#setup some variables
POCKETQUERY="/home/hmsterror/temp/known-found-caches.gpx"
TARGETCACHES="/home/hmsterror/temp/proposed-list-of-caches.txt"

while read -r line
do
       grep $line $POCKETQUERY
done <$TARGETCACHES

...where any results returned are the duplicate entries between my proposed list and her actual finds list.

 

Not sure this is github ready Maybe if I make it a little more flexible, build in some error checking, add some help, prettied up the output, and cross compile it for Windows users.

[+HMS Terror]

I'm a little late to the party on this, but the Map Compare tool on project-gc.com can display caches found by both of you, one of you, or neither of you. Map compare is one of the features that are only available to paying members, but that site has many other tools on it that may be worth your while.

That's a good tool, but does not quite meet my needs for this specific instance. I'm looking to determine if she has found any caches from a specific list of about 80 caches that I definitely have not found.

 

Pocket queries did the trick for me, nicely. There may be other answers but for now this is the best I've got, and it's pretty good so I'm happy.

[+HMS Terror]

Oh, and for interested parties, how big is a pocket query file for 8,999 caches? About 30mb.

[+lee737]

I would use project-GC from the outset - choose where you want to go, select both your usernames, choose 'found by neither' - look at map and pick a route.....

[+Pond Bird]

You have a list of caches, and you want to know if she has found them? There isn't an easy way.

 

I say, go to her profile page, and click on all her found caches. (Pull up the list of the caches she has found.) Sort these - it'd be nice if you could sort by name or GC code, but I don't think you can. Sorting by placed date will be close to sorting by GC code, though.

 

Then sort your list of 80 caches the same way.

 

Then compare the two lists.

 

That and if the list has caches all in the same area you could use filters since you are a premium member as was mentioned in the first response to your post. See what hzoi said for an alternative.

[+HMS Terror]

I would use project-GC from the outset - choose where you want to go, select both your usernames, choose 'found by neither' - look at map and pick a route.....

In your scenario, that would work fine and I've done it that way - but my scenario is slightly different.

 

I have a specific list of caches, they are not dependent on location or area - these were selected for another reason that is relevant to my friend. These 80 caches are spread all over the state. So, it's not a matter of saying we are going to Location A and want to find all the caches there that she hasn't found previously.

 

The pocket query really did the trick, I have all the information I need. Now it's simply a matter of route planning!

[+noncentric]

I'm a little late to the party on this, but the Map Compare tool on project-gc.com can display caches found by both of you, one of you, or neither of you. Map compare is one of the features that are only available to paying members, but that site has many other tools on it that may be worth your while.

OT, but PGC's MapCompare feature does not require a PGC membership.

[+hzoi]

I'm a little late to the party on this, but the Map Compare tool on project-gc.com can display caches found by both of you, one of you, or neither of you. Map compare is one of the features that are only available to paying members, but that site has many other tools on it that may be worth your while.

OT, but PGC's MapCompare feature does not require a PGC membership.

I stand corrected. Thanks!

[+fuzziebear3]

GSAK could also let you build a database and then filter on it. But it might be more complicated than you want to get into.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Yep. It would take me less than an hour to write program which compares GPX files and spits out a list of GC codes neither has found. I'd be surprised if someone hasn't done it before. Someone probably has but just hasn't shared it on GitHub (hint, hint).

Well, I just scripted it so I'd have to clean it up quite a bit Here it is, in all its down and dirty glory:

 

#!/bin/bash
#27-jun-2017
#script to compare proposed list of caches against known found caches.

#setup some variables
POCKETQUERY="/home/hmsterror/temp/known-found-caches.gpx"
TARGETCACHES="/home/hmsterror/temp/proposed-list-of-caches.txt"

while read -r line
do
       grep $line $POCKETQUERY
done <$TARGETCACHES

...where any results returned are the duplicate entries between my proposed list and her actual finds list.

 

Not sure this is github ready Maybe if I make it a little more flexible, build in some error checking, add some help, prettied up the output, and cross compile it for Windows users.

 

I'd be curious to see what the output of this script look like. A GPX file doesn't have one cache per line. Each waypoint is represented by and XML structure so the grep command is going to return *any* line that matches, not just the GC code. BTW, do you know why grep is called grep? In the earliest editors on unix the command for displaying lines which match a pattern is g/re/p which stands for "Get Regular Expression and Print".

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Yep. It would take me less than an hour to write program which compares GPX files and spits out a list of GC codes neither has found. I'd be surprised if someone hasn't done it before. Someone probably has but just hasn't shared it on GitHub (hint, hint).

Well, I just scripted it so I'd have to clean it up quite a bit Here it is, in all its down and dirty glory:

 

#!/bin/bash
#27-jun-2017
#script to compare proposed list of caches against known found caches.

#setup some variables
POCKETQUERY="/home/hmsterror/temp/known-found-caches.gpx"
TARGETCACHES="/home/hmsterror/temp/proposed-list-of-caches.txt"

while read -r line
do
       grep $line $POCKETQUERY
done <$TARGETCACHES

...where any results returned are the duplicate entries between my proposed list and her actual finds list.

 

Not sure this is github ready Maybe if I make it a little more flexible, build in some error checking, add some help, prettied up the output, and cross compile it for Windows users.