Authority Lists

EPrints can autocomplete on an authority file. The file needs to be placed in eprints3/archives/ARCHIVEID/cfg/autocomplete/.

Creating Your Own Authority File (simple)

Note that in the above example, autocompletion in the Publication Title field will fill in the 'Publication Title', the 'Publisher' and the 'ISSN' input boxes. If you only require to autocomplete a single input box, you can create a file containing a list of possible values, one on each line.

Imagine you want to autocomplete on projects. Create a file with the following content:

The Visual Apple Project
Project Thunderbolt
The Farm Tool Enhancement Programme
Top Secrent Defence Research

Name it projects.autocomplete and put it in

/opt/eprints3/archives/ARCHIVEID/cfg/autocomplete

Now edit

/opt/eprints3/archives/ARCHIVEID/cfg/workflows/eprint/default.xml

Find the input for project

<component><field ref="projects" /></component>

Modify the line to use the simple_file script:

<component>
 <field ref="projects" input_lookup_url="{$config{perl_url}}/users/lookup/simple_file" input_lookup_params="file=projects.autocomplete"/>
</component>

Save the file and restart the webserver.

Creating Your Own Authority File (complex)

If you wish to autocomplete several input boxes inside the same component, the complexity of the authority file increases.

EPrints Romeo is a service which provides a list of journals and their open access status. A EPrints 3 authority file is available from their website.

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 <li>...</li> 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 <li>.

A <li> 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.

 African Journal of Agricultural Research        <li style='border-right: solid 50px #30FF30' >"African Journal of Agricultural Research" published by "Academic Publishers"<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>

The first two parts of this are simple.

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

The list is a little more complex:

<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>

This contains the values which will be inserted into the 'publication', 'publisher' and 'issn' fields in this component. Note that even though this <ul> is inside the <li> which will be displayed, it will not be seen by the user.

For more information, please see the Autocompletion reference.

Using the EPrints Romeo Authority File

First get the authority file and put it in the right place:

%cd /opt/eprints3/archives/ARCHIVEID/cfg/autocomplete
%wget romeo.eprints.org/romeo_journals.autocomplete

Now the file needs to be linked into the workflow. Edit the file

/opt/eprints3/archives/ARCHIVEID/cfg/workflows/eprint/default.xml

Find the input for Publication Title

<field ref="publication" required="yes" input_lookup_url="{$config{perl_url}}/users/lookup/journal_by_name" />

By default, this is set to use the 'journal_by_name' script, which searches records already in the repository. However, now that we have a long list of journals that we've downloaded from Romeo, we'd like to use that instead. Modify the line:

 <field ref="publication" required="yes" input_lookup_url="{$config{perl_url}}/users/lookup/file" input_lookup_params="file=romeo_journals.autocomplete"/>

All that is left now is to restart the webserver.