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BCRA > Publications > Database Format
22-Nov-2017: This page has not been revised since
January 2013, and is possibly rather out-of-date, especially regarding technical details for the
Dales book pages, and allowable file names. (Cave Studies and Dales book pages allow for files
that are not chapter numbers). The CREG Database stucture is not described here, but has been
shoehorned-in HERE.
The online listings for BCRA publications and catalogues are generated dynamically from
a database, which is a human-readable text file. (Database simply meaning "a collection of data").
The current (05-Mar-2020) catalogues are
Lists-only catalogues are...
Eventually (or so it was planned), every mention of a periodical would be accompanied
by an icon on which the customer could click to order it, i.e. an online shop. The database
formats are all slightly different, as they were developed at different times and have yet to be
consolidated. The salient points are
- To add an issue to the listing, you simply upload a (correctly named and formatted)
database file. You do not have to create an HTML page or do anything else.
- If there is downloadable content (i.e. PDFs) you simply upload the (correctly named
and formatted) PDFs. You do not have to "tell" the system that some PDFs exist and others do not.
- To add a front cover picture, you simply upload a (correctly named and sized) JPG
file.
- To add a Layman's Summary document to the C&KS listing, you simply upload the
(correctly named and formatted) PDFs.
If you have been given FTP access to the system, it should be fairly obvious where
things need to go; the data directories are, for example here
for Cave & Karst Science and here for the CREG journal. The
file names should be obvious too. The database format is described here, although this document is not up to date.
The PDF Naming Requirements are...
- The file name comprises the issue number and the first page number of
the publication. It may well be that the same content will appear in more than one PDF. For
example if one article spans pages 3 to 6 and another spans pages 6 to 7, then page 6 appears in
both PDFs.
- If an article spans a non-consecutive page range, that's fine; the PDFs can contain
"anything" but their name is based on the first pasge number of the article.
- Note the special use of the pages numbered 000 and i to iv.
- If the PDF is free-issue this has a special indication in the file name, which must
end in .f.pdf. In the database it is no longer necessary to set the %Z tag to 'free' but %Z
can be set to openAccess to cause the Open Access logo to display.
- If there is a layman's summary for a C&KS article, use the %Z tag to indicate
this (see here) and ensure that there is a PDF in the folder
named summary containing a file name in the format j[issue-reference-code]s.pdf
- The PDFs must be coded with a prefix that indicates the catalogue to which they
below, e.g. j, cks, sp, cs, x
- The search order for finding a valid document to link to is: *.pdf,
*.f.pdf, *.xls, *.f.xls, *.f.txt, *.f.jpg
Advanced PDF Naming Requirements
- BOOKS: If the database file has the %0 tag set to book (e.g. in
the PHP: $pub_choices = 'cavestudies, dalesbook, template, general';) then the database %P
tag refers to a chapter number rather than a page number. E.g. %P 23 would display, in the
bibliograph, as Ch. 23. However, if the page number is 0 or begins with i
then it displays as Item:, without a numerical reference.
- SUPPLEMENTS: In the C&KS bibliographs, if the page range begins with
S then it indicates an online supplement. For example, %P S1-S8 indicates an eight
page supplement, with a PDF file name of (e.g.) cks126S1.pdf.
- In this situation, the %T tag could be set to something like %T <SPAN
STYLE="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; color:green;">Online
supplement to above paper</SPAN></LI>
Conceptual Description of Supplements
- As far as the software is concerned, S is simply an allowed character in page
number ranges. (The page number that follows is ptinted "as is" rather than in field of width
three; but that is the only difference. Viz: %P S1-S8-->cks126S1.pdf but %P
1-8-->cks126001.pdf.
- Conceptually it is best to think of the supplemental material as part of the
main text. The main text might have pages 1 to 48, say, and be followed by pages S1 to S12 (say)
except that the latter pages do not appear in the print edition, nor in the PDF of the full
printed edition. Clearly, it does not matter in what order the appendices appear in the
supplement, just as it does not matter in what order the main papers appear. However, the
bibliographs will usually list the individual appendices after the article to which they refer.
- CREG JOURNAL: This does not yet allow supplements - although clearly both
CREGJ and CKS can have additional page numbers that do not correspond to pages in the print
edition. The CREG journal allows for links to the CREG Forum that appear after the title of the
article instead of a page-number range of a CREGJ article, as in this example: Cave
Radio and the Loran-C Spectrum [cregf:viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1402] where [cregf: is
recognised as introducing a URI fragment that will be appended to the Forum's basic URI, and
displayed like this:
See further reading on the CREG forum
 .
The Sandbox Feature
If the data file is tagged as a sandbox then the contents list is not printed
unless the URL includes sandbox=yes in the query string. Examples:
bcra.org.uk/cregj/?sandbox=yes or
bcra.org.uk/cregj/?j=82&sandbox=yes. To
tag the data as a sandbox...
- CREG Journal: If the first line of the CREG data file begins 'sandbox: then
only the text following that, on the same line, is printed. The rest of the contents list is
ignored.
- C&KS: If the %S tag is present in the HEADER section of the data file
then only the HEADER data is printed and, underneath, the text of the %S tag is printed. The
ARTICLES section of the data file is ignored.
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