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The next logical step probably would have been to configure the browseable subject listing views and finish off the interface for the end user. However, this requires decisions be made about collection management policy and a clearly defined classification scheme to be in place first. It is also useful to have a reasonable number of records in the database to properly test. At this point my database still contained the sample eLib records. I therefore decided to leave this task until after the database was populated with some of my own records.
In order to populate the database I needed to configure the Administration Centre and Cataloguing interfaces, so I decided to tackle these first.
The ROADS Admin. Centre is generated dynamically from the /roadsv2.1/admin-cgi/admincentre.pl script. By default it offers all of the administration tools to everyone, when in fact only the main gateway administrator would ever need access to all of these options.
A gateway cataloguer (a person who creates the gateway metadata templates / records) would only normally need a few of these options, and good interface design dictates that the user should only ever see those options they will use.
I decided, therefore, to have a basic interface for the cataloguers on my gateway and again decided to make this a static HTML document. I created a new in the /roadsv2.1/htdocs/ directory called 'admin' to place the static document into. I only included the facility to create DOCUMENT and SERVICE template types as generally these suffice for most gateways.
I created a new directory so that I could give authenticated access to this interface. This is to provide control over who can add records to the database. I used Netscape to save the HTML generated from the admincentre.pl file and ftp'd it into the new directory I had created.
I decided to make a few changes default dynamically generated Admin. Centre as well as there are one or two options that need to be adjusted.
The main adjustment was to the 'Quick Edit' buttons on the Admin. Centre. I decided to keep the two template types referenced by the buttons but I wanted to make sure a subject cluster was added by default. In order to do this I needed to edit the /roads-v2.1/config/multilingual/UK-English/admincentre/admincentre.html file.
The chunk of HTML that creates these buttons needed to be adjusted:
<FORM ACTION="<MYURL>/<ADMIN-CGI>/mktemp.pl" METHOD="POST">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="language" VALUE="en">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="charset" VALUE="iso-8859-1">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="templatetype" VALUE="DOCUMENT">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="asksize" VALUE="sizes">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="view" VALUE="Quick Edit">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="op" VALUE="text">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="mode" VALUE="create">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="originalhandle" VALUE="">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="partdone" VALUE="yes">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="clusterAuthor" VALUE="1">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="clusterAdmin" VALUE="1">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="clusterSubject" VALUE="1">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="variantsize" VALUE="1">
<INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Quick DOCUMENT Template Creation">
</FORM>
I added the following lines:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="clusterAuthor" VALUE="1">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="clusterAdmin" VALUE="1">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="clusterSubject" VALUE="1">
I also needed to ensure that the 'subject' fields were set up to be visible in the template editor in the /roads-v2.1/config/mktemp-views/service and /roads-v2.1/config/mktemp-views/document files. These are the files which determine which fields are shown in each template editor configuration.
Tip: It is possible to add your own template view by simply adding your new view name to those fields you wish to display. Thus, for a new view called 'Paul' the line you would add 'Paul:' to the end of each field you wish to use in that view:
Subject-Descriptor-v*:Common elements:Quick:Edit:Paul:
I changed the lines as follows:
Character-Set-v*:
ISBN-v*:Common elements:
ISSN-v*:Common elements:
Last-Revision-Date-v*:
Subject-Descriptor-v*:Common elements:Quick:Edit:
Subject-Descriptor-Scheme-v*:Common elements:Quick Edit:
To-Be-Reviewed-Date:Common elements:
Record-Last-Verified-Email:
Record-Last-Verified-Date:
Comments:Common elements:
Destination:Quick Edit:Common elements:
Whilst I was editing these files I thought I might as well finish off choosing the various fields to go into my template editor 'Quick Edit' view. While doing this I noticed a problem. The 'Template-Type' entry for the SERVICE template was 'DOCUMENT' not 'SERVICE'. I changed this before anything else. I then selected the fields I wanted in my DOCUMENT and SERVICE templates. These are the two template types which are most used. At this point I decided to make a new copy of the HTML generated by admincentre.pl as the basis of my static admin centre. I used Netscape in the same way as before and edited this in a text editor.
ROADS Administration Centre
The next task was to configure the results views for those searches run against admin.pl from my new Admin. Centre.
I decided to leave the search form linked from the default Admin. Centre as is because I had included a form to allow this type of searching in my new Admin. Centre main page. Therefore I left the /roads-v2.1/config/multilingual/UK-English/admin/admin.html file as it was.
For the other files I decided to use the nohits, noconnect etc. messages from my main search files. I therefore copied the contents of /roads-v2.1/config/multilingual/UK-English/search to /roads-v2.1/config/multilingual/UK-English/admin, removed the unwanted files and edited those I wanted to keep.
Once I had done this I set to work on the results view from my Admin. Centre searches. These files are kept in the /roads-v2.1/config/multilingual/UK-English/admin-views/default/ directory. Once again there are header, trailer and full files. Because I wanted the same files as for my end-user search results I decided that rather than copy these files and have two sets to maintain that I would use a symbolic link between them.
ln -s ../../search-views/default/header ../default/header
ln -s ../../search-views/default/trailer ../default/trailer
ln -s ../../search-views/default/full ../default/full
I also took a copy of /roads-v2.1/lib/ROADS/Render.pm and edited the bit of code which places the buttons in this display to tidy things up a bit. I ended up with the following display:
Admin.pl search results
The next task was to tackle the template editor itself.
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Last updated: February 1999 - paul.hollands@bris.ac.uk