Add Ability to Have Range of Serving Sizes

[arsocha]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
In my experience, the serving size field only accepts a single integer value. Many recipes have ranges of expected servings based on a variety of factors. When I try to put in a range (e.g. 12-18) the results defaults to "1".

Describe the solution you'd like
Allow the "serving size" field to accept a range of serving sizes. (Solution potentially in the form of changing to a text field?)

Describe alternatives you've considered
If I would like a range I currently just put this in the description as a note, but a more flexible serving size field would be more convenient.

[seyfeb]

Just to clarify: You mean the number of servings (recipe yield) and not the "serving size" (which is part of the nutrion information and means the size of a single serving (mass or volume)). In the second case there is a text input field, so I’m pretty sure you mean the first.

Looking at the schema.org definition for a recipe which we are following here, a text input seems to be fine, so this could be changed.

[arsocha]

Hi @seyfeb, thanks for the follow-up question. I am indeed talking about the number servings (recipe yield) and not the nutrition information.

e.g.

One question on my end though is I wonder if there are any requested features (or things in progress) that would benefit from a numeric field for recipe yield? I was thinking about it more and I could see how people might want to be able to change the # of servings and get automatically updated recipe inputs.

I don't if there is a way to get the best of both worlds or perhaps if automatic adjustment features in the future could try and guess based on text input (e.g. 1st numeric value in a string?)

[seyfeb]

Indeed, there is #116 where multiplying ingredient quantities was requested, although this has more (actually kind of the same) problems as the number (or text) of the servings field .

[christianlupus]

In general, parsing is hard as we are talking of natural language. Different languages have different grammars and even different measure systems (see e.g. the American system of fractions of cups (2 3/4 cups) vs the European system of using liter and decimal fractions of it (0.5l)).

I have a suggestion to keep this at bay:
We define a range to save the 12 to 16 servings in the real JSON as suggested. In an extension (will require #340) we can specify an exact number that the recipe will serve (a mean value). Once the UI detects that a non-literal number is typed, a new field is shown to let the user specify this average serving number that could be used for further calculations.

Would that work?

[arsocha]

@christianlupus thanks for the reply! I certainly get that a text-parsing solution would probably be difficult, messy, and insufficient flexibility needed across languages - just a first pass thought.

I also read through #340 and won't pretend to understand all the technical detail. If the proposed re-definition as a defined range via JSON is feasible then I am all for if in your estimation it doesn't trade one feature for another set of challenges.

Not quite sure how I can help otherwise given my lack of technical skills in this arena but happy to try if there is anything I can do on this task.