Ad embedding issues: what operators work?

Marking this as a feature request.

WHat I am trying to do is [[ad|group=X&group=Y]] to ONLY display ads matching both parameters. I am getting really strange results. With some combos I get the right results using the above style, with other group combos I get the right result with [[ad|group=X|group=Y]]. I don't see any documentation that the embed module supports any sort of boolean operators but I definitely get different results based on what I use. Unfortunately, I don't understand how it is working so it is inconsistent and unmanageable for me.

The module does not currently support any Boolean logic. Furthermore, it has very poor performance due to how it is implemented. It needs to be re-implemented as a standard Drupal filter first, after which perhaps additional logic could be added to the embedded tags. This would first require additional logic be added to the core ad serving functionality. In other words, it's not a small request, and not likely to happen any time soon.

Is there a way to do what I want to do. My actual tags look like [ad|quantity=500|group=X(&/|)group=Y]]. I want to display 500 ads randomly from ads with both group X and group Y but not from group X or Y alone.

Man, I hope there is a way to do this as I structured an entire site around it and have put a lot of time into it already (~15 hours). Please help if you can.

Sorry, but this is currently not possible with the current code base. There's a fair amount of development time necessary to get what you want, and as it's not something I need it's not likely to get implemented any time soon. Sorry to disappoint you.

BTW: For a complete understanding of what is supported by the ad_embed module, take a look at the built in help. On your website (if you have the help module enabled), visit admin/help/ad_embed.

You can use the "tids=#,#" format to select ads from multiple groups. But it simply combines all possible ads together, then randomly selects from the union of the groups. It does not support searching for ads that are only found in both groups. It does not support searching for ads that are only in one group and not the other. It only supports searching for ads that are in one or more of the specified groups.

Glad to hear you got what you want. It would be great if you could update this issue adding some details as to how you implemented this with views -- I'd gladly include that information in the distributed documentation. Perhaps it's time for a RECIPE.txt or something similar.

I second the motion - would like to hear what you did to get it to work.