[Refdb-users] using refdb with a course website

[Markus H. <mar...@mh...>]

Hi Matt,

of course I'm a little biased, but I'll try to sell you RefDB anyway
as the best match for your needs. See the specifics below.

Matt Price writes:
 > Now that I have refdb up and running (thanks Markus!), I'm trying to
 > figure out whether it really makes sense for me to use it as a backend
 > for this project -- it seems so complicated!  I'm not really sure I
 > need all that power.  My needs are, I think, rather simple compared to
 > what you guys have done:  
 > 

It's usually harder to add something to a project that doesn't quite
do what you need than to not use some features of a project that does
all you need and then some. If the whole thing seems too complicated
to you, please don't hesitate to bug the list with questions.

 > -- I want to be able to display citations on a web page in pretty html
 >    -- the citation list should be generated automatically by keyword
 >    or by an additional field that spip calls "rubrique" and I'm
 >    translating as "category".
 > 

Depending on your programming skills, you can copy and edit one of the
existing refdbd backends and have it create customized HTML code. A
more versatile way of doing things is to use the new Perl client
module (available in CVS and in the next release) to implement a
custom CGI script that does the formatting on the client side. The new
risx XML output might be a good source for this purpose.

 > -- I want students to be able to enter citations via a simple, fast
 >    web interface (I've generated a simple form for entering url's
 >    using PHP; bibliographies are a bit more complicated, but i think I
 >    ought to be able to modify the form with a little more work).  It
 >    would be nice to take advantage of some of the metadata and helpful
 >    hints refdb has built in.
 > 

There's been a message a few days ago about another person
implementing a SOAP thing in PHP. It might make sense to pool efforts
and get something like the Perl client module done in PHP. I'm not
into PHP myself, so I urge anyone with PHP skills to join in.

 > -- I would love to be able to generate bibliographies out of search
 >    results, which students could then download and take to the library
 >    with them.  It would be nice to have an option of putting these
 >    bibliographies either in html (not tooooo hard) or in a reusable
 >    format -- something that could be plugged back in to refdb,
 >    pybliographer, endnote, or OpenOffice (I see this as harder, but
 >    maybe I'm wrong).  
 > 

This reusable format might be risx. We'd just need a XSLT stylesheet
to pretty-print it. Another option is the existing DocBook backend
which supports annotations and abstracts (the CVS version, that
is). This can be formatted with the official DocBook stylesheets,
maybe aided by a small driver file and by a document wrapper.

 > Other stuff -- like harvesting references from the library catalog or
 > from various online services -- would also be great, but that can
 > wait.  
 > 
 > Anyway... It seems to me that I can do #2 directly with php, acting on
 > the main table of a refdb database, but without using the refdb
 > frontend as my interface. As for the other two tasks: I'd love to
 > steal the labour y'all have already put into this project, rather than
 > try to make it work on my own.  Does this all seem like a relatively
 > straightforward project to y'all?  Any suggestions as to how I ought
 > to go about doing this?  
 > 

Fiddling directly with the main table is not recommended as you'd give
up the relational aspect of the RefDB database scheme. Relational is
good as soon as you think about larger numbers of references, like you
apparently do. I'd suggest to have a close look at the Perl client
module.

 > THanks for your help.  I'm a complete novice with programming, so even
 > simple scripting languages like php are a bit of a challenge;
 > nonetheless, I can also plug away in my pigheaded fashion long enough
 > to figure out my mistakes...  So anyway, looking forward to your 
 > guidance.  
 > 

I'd appreciate if you'd go ahead and come up with something like a PHP
front end. I'd appreciate even more if the code was sufficiently
modularized to allow other projects to steal from it. 

regards,
Markus
 
-- 
Markus Hoenicka
mar...@ca...
(Spam-protected email: replace the quadrupeds with "mhoenicka")
http://www.mhoenicka.de