Too similar names

[ozeitis]

So there is a new issue I found and am wondering how to approach it. I think a solution should be built into this.

The issue is that if two professors have too similar of a name, or the input is too vague, it chooses the wrong professor.

One solution is to provide ALL results for professors based on input rather than the first relative occurrence, then the user can use their own logic to select a professor.

The second, the better but harder one, would be to accept any name and have this API deduce which professor out of all related results best matches the name. Example:
If I look for professor with name "John Doe" and we get results like "John Mike", "John B", "Dan John, "John D.", the program should be able to think and understand that John D. is most likely to be who we are looking for.

This is important as I realized that in many cases professors' names are shortened or lengthened on RMP compared to how they are shown on the school pages.

[Nobelz]

1. Could you not use get_professors_by_school_by_name, which returns a list of Professors, of which you could find the one you're looking for?
2. That would be a great idea; unfortunately, I do not have the capability to implement such functionality. Currently, if there are multiple entries for one search result, the professor returned is the one with the maximum amount of ratings. If you have any idea on how to implement a better algorithm, I am all ears.

[ozeitis]

I would love to take a stab at it. For my own personal project and to grow my knowledge :). If you want to join me / speak I would love to. In general, would love to further this project in many ways as I really do love it. If you interested you can add me on Discord if you want. Its oz#9999, if not it is all good and I can just pull my edits.

[Nobelz]

Have at it, let me know how it goes! I've sent you a friend request but most likely won't be able to help much, as I'm in finals week. Do keep me updated, however!

[ozeitis]

#6 Done

[Nobelz]

I'm going to leave this open until the other pull request gets merged.