docs/FINDING_CARDS.md

How to Find Cards in Lovecasim

If you are having trouble finding a specific card in data/cards.json, follow these tips.

1. Use Broad Patterns

Instead of searching for the full ID which might have variations in dashes or prefixes (e.g., PL!N-bp3-012-P vs PL-bp3-012), search for the core numeric part.

• Good: 012
• Better: "card_no": ".*012" (Regex)

2. Search by Name

If you know the Japanese name, searching for it is often more reliable.

• Example: 鐘 嵐珠

3. Recommended Method for Large Files (Windows)

Standard search tools like grep or findstr may fail on large JSON files (cards.json, cards_compiled.json) due to line length, encoding, or file size. The most reliable method in this environment is using PowerShell's Get-Content piped to Select-String.

Usage

Get-Content -Path 'data\cards.json' | Select-String -Pattern 'bp3-012' -Context 0,5

• -Pattern: Supports Regex.
• -Context 0,5: Shows 5 lines after the match (good for JSON block context).
• Encoding: PowerShell handles UTF-8 and UTF-16 more gracefully for Japanese text.

Why Standard Search Might Fail

• Line Length: Compiled JSON often has extremely long lines that buffer-overflow simple grep implementations.
• Encoding: cards.json contains Japanese characters; many CLI tools default to ASCII or the system locale (Shift-JIS), causing mismatches. Get-Content correctly interprets the file stream.

4. Check the Card Directory

Images are stored in frontend/img/cards/. You can browse directories to find the exact naming convention used for a specific set.

• Path: frontend/img/cards/BP03/

5. Use the Source of Truth

Always refer to data/cards.json as the master source. If cards_compiled.json is out of sync, run the compiler:

uv run python -m compiler.main