Routster

Favourites

Star a runner once, and follow them across every competition running today.

Adding one

Tap the heart next to any runner in a results list. A favourite is recorded as a name plus a club, taken from the row, so there is nothing to type.

The club is stored with the relay team number stripped, so favouriting someone from "Täby OK 3" finds them again next weekend in "Täby OK".

Where they live

Favourites are stored against your Routster account, so the same list appears on your phone and your laptop. Signed out, they are kept on that one device and merged into your account the first time you sign in.

The merge combines both lists and carries removals: a runner you unfavourited while signed out is deleted from the account rather than restored on the next sign-in.

The list is all that is stored

No result is written into your favourites. Every time shown against a favourite is read from the same live class subscription the results table uses.

How a favourite is found each day

Two steps:

  1. Locate. For each competition running today, Live reads that competition's entry index — a server-built, cached list of who is in which class — and looks for your favourites in it. Up to 24 competitions are searched in one pass.
  2. Read. Only the classes your favourites are actually in are subscribed, through the same live query the class table uses.

Step 2 shares its cache key with the class table, so a favourite's row and that runner's class page are the same object and update together.

What you see

StateShown as
Out on a courseTheir place so far, their time at the last control they reached, and a running elapsed clock
FinishedTheir finish time and place
Entered but not startedTheir class and start time
Not found in any of today's competitionsListed separately as not racing today, rather than silently dropped

Favourites running today also appear as a strip at the top of the competition list, so you see them without navigating anywhere. The dedicated favourites page shows the same data plus the ones not racing.

When a favourite cannot be located

Where a competition's entry index came back incomplete, Live says so rather than reporting the runner as not entered. An incomplete index is cached only briefly and resolves within a minute or two. A runner missing for longer is usually entered under a different spelling of their name: search their class and re-favourite from the row.

Cost

Following ten runners costs a handful of cached requests. The entry index is built once per competition on the server for everybody, then cached in the browser for the rest of the day for competitions that are over.

At most 40 classes are watched live at once. Where favourites are spread across more than that, Live reports how many it left out. See How live updating works.