Zazzlers: Exciting new Nifty pulling approach - filtering!

This really is exciting news for Zazzlers who use Nifty to help them promote their or other's designs.

The new approach will let you filter out results you don't want and still get the number of products you want. It goes like this:

• You get up to three filter terms, each can use one or more words
• You get three places you can tell nIFTTTy where to look to do the filtering
• Titles
• Descriptions
• Tags

The special part is that once all filtered items are removed, the next page of results are requested from Zazzle and, after filtering, the remaining ones are added to your results. This repeats until you have the number you want.

It'll try pulling up to 9 pages of Zazzle results to get the number of products you want.

Next project is to update the Nifty Promo Control Panel - initially filtering will be just for the nIFTTTy scheduler

The first one I've converted to use the new approach is the nIFTTTy scheduler but I haven't yet decided which of the other various Nifty tools should use this approach - hopefully I'll be able to do all of them given enough time!

Although I've done the scheduler now (to see if I could do it in php, the programming language the scheduler is written in), there's not much use for it until Zazzle fixes their rss feed mechanism when it's pulling from the market place.

I haven't yet updated Nifty itself to allow for filtering when you use it to set up the scheduling, so only the brave can use it (see end).

The reason I say that is when you're pulling from your own store, you can easily arrange to get just the products you want - by using a category and / or department or a collection.

The one use for it right now could be pulling from someone else's store, where you love some of their designs but others aren't what your after. With the ability to filter out products, you could find it easy to only get what you're after and not what you're not!

There's one other additional feature that could prove to be really useful - the ability to see the entire feed of items the scheduler is working with - sort of like a sense-check before you use it for real in an IFTTT (If This Then That) applet.

If you want to see the entire feed it's working with (this works right now):

1. Copy the feed url as usual (ready for pasting into a new IFTTT applet)
2. Instead, paste it into the address bar of a new browser tab /window
3. Put &sef=1 immediately after your referral id in the address bar
4. Hit return to see the entire feed it will be working with

🔺 Don't ever use &sef=1 in an IFTTT applet because it could end up sharing / posting / pinning the lot and you won't be popular or could get rate-limited!

⚠️ Oh, one last thing - you'll only see the entire feed when one of your chosen time slots is active.

Coming next

Don't hold your breath but next on the cards is:

• Update the Nifty Promo Control Panel to allow the filtering parameters to be set up - just for the nIFTTTy scheduler, initially
• Possibly some of the widgets after that?

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Technical bits

🤓 For the curious, the new parameters that nIFTTTy uses for filtering purposes are:

• &trm1= - the first filter term (single or multiple words - if multiple, use + between words)
• &trm2= - the second filtering terms (single or multiple words - if multiple, use + between words)
• &trm3= - the third filtering terms (single or multiple words - if multiple, use + between words)
• &lttls=1 - apply the filter term(s) to each product title
• &ldscs=1 - apply the filter term(s) to each product description
• &ltags=1 - apply the filter term(s) to each product's tags 

If you don't want to use any parameters, either don't mention them or put nothing after the = sign.

An example

To get a feed of items while filtering out any postage stamps and any nebula designs, add the following, just after your referral id in the feed url the nIFTTTy scheduler gives.

&trm1=postage&trm2=stamp&trm3=nebula&lttls=1&ldscs=1&ltags=1