Editing Authority Lists (section)

=== Understanding Complex Authority Files ===

* An authority file is a set of lines.
* Each single line represents one entry in the authority file.

An entry consists of:

* A lookup string (case insensitive)
* A tab
* A <nowiki><li>...</li></nowiki> chunk of XHTML

The 'file' cgi script will take the fragment that a user has entered and match it to the lookup string.  It will return the <nowiki><li></nowiki>.

A <nowiki><li></nowiki> contains:

* A piece of XHTML to display
* A magic list items to insert into the form, inside the XHTML to display.

Here is an example from the EPrints Romeo authority file.
<pre>
 African Journal of Agricultural Research        <li style='border-right: solid 50px #30FF30' >&quot;African Journal of Agricultural Research&quot; published by &quot;Academic Publishers&quot;<br /><small>(a Green publisher)</small>ISSN: 1991-637X<ul><li id="for:value:component:_publication">African Journal of Agricultural Research</li><li id="for:value:component:_publisher">Academic Publishers</li><li id="for:value:component:_issn">1991-637X</li></ul></li>
</pre>

The first two parts of this are simple.

<pre>
 * String to Match = African Journal of Agricultural Research
 * <li> to display = <li style='border-right: solid 50px #30FF30' >&quot;African Journal of Agricultural Research&quot; published by &quot;Academic Publishers&quot;<br /><small>(a Green publisher)</small>ISSN: 1991-637X</li>
</pre>

The list is a little more complex:

<pre>
<ul>
  <li id="for:value:component:_publication">African Journal of Agricultural Research</li>
  <li id="for:value:component:_publisher">Academic Publishers</li>
  <li id="for:value:component:_issn">1991-637X</li>
</ul>
</pre>

This contains the values which will be inserted into the 'publication', 'publisher' and 'issn' fields in this component.  Note that even though this <nowiki><ul></nowiki> is inside the <nowiki><li></nowiki> which will be displayed, it will not be seen by the user.  
On [[Understanding_IDs_in_Workflow_Forms|Understanding IDs in Workflow Forms]] a detailed explanation of the ID generation is given.