Question

I want to setup a TWiki web/zone for my guitar tabs that I've collected over the years. Ideally, I'd like to drop in new files by song name. I'll cut and paste into the TWiki edit window with PRE tags to keep the ASCII formatting.

Additionally, I'd like to easily search by artist name and possibly the album. That's the part I'm not sure how to accomplish. I guess I could set up the artist names as Wiki words, and embed into those pages some search query that would find the artist name. That will get to be a pain when I have several artists in the system. Same thing goes for the album name. I think the best way would be for the artist name to be automatically linked to a search where the results include only the artist's songs...with no special artist page required.

I played around with setting up a web form to record artist/album info (using text fields instead of predefined dropdowns), but it doesn't seem like searching web form data is very easy.

Any ideas how I could set this up most efficiently? There might be some TWiki feature that I'm not aware of that would make this easy.

Thanks for your help!

• TWiki version: 2003 Feb 01
• Perl version:
• Web server & version: Apache
• Server OS: Linux
• Web browser & version:
• Client OS:

-- MikeBoone - 11 Jul 2003

Answer

Not an answer yet, but just trying to summarize what you're looking for from one viewpoint.

I guess you want:

• TWiki pages containing the guitar tablature named with the song name (as a WikiWord)
• Ability to search by:
  • Artist
  • Album

The brute force ways I might try this include:

• TWiki names built like <Artist><Album><SongTitle> (example: JeffersonAirplaneVolunteersWoodenShips, or CrosbyStillsNashAndYoungDejaVuSuiteJudyBlueEyes (or CSNY...) — it looks ridiculous but it is doable.

• TWiki names built like <Artist><Album> (example: JeffersonAirplaneVolunteers) then all songs from that album on one page, with a separate heading for each and an auto %TOC% on each page.

• A web for each artist (naaa, that's too much work).

Embedded search queries can help, and maybe suggesting these cumbersome approaches (which I might very well use under similar circumstances) might prompt someone to suggest some better approaches.

-- RandyKramer - 12 Jul 2003

I hope some guru will give you better answer, I just can point you where to search, what to read.

TWikiVariables, especially FormattedSearch. SEARCH allows you to generate tricky formatting - in example items in pulldown menu. And SearchUsingMulitpleFormValues (resp. SearchUsingMultipleFormValues) has another piece of answer for you - how to do AND.

Warning: If you want to make this 100% dynamically generated, with multiple formatted SEARCH commands, rendering pages with search forms might get slow pretty fast.

Another option (even more complex - and powerfull) might be DatabasePlugin or even ADatabaseCalledTWiki. It depends on your admin/perl hacking skils, and time scope. Pick your poison.

-- PeterMasiar - 13 Jul 2003

Thanks for the ideas guys. I was hoping TWiki had some magic features there that would make this really easy, but I guess it's not that simple. I have a good background in PHP and SQL databases, so it might be easier to go that route than to try to integrate a DB with TWiki.

Anyone else feel free to chime in.

-- MikeBoone - 14 Jul 2003

Hmm, it's probably worth a look at Codev.ADatabaseCalledTWiki before you give up on TWiki — others do have similar desires, and, IIRC, there is an implementation.

-- RandyKramer - 14 Jul 2003

Mike, I did not want to discourage you. I still think you can easier to build decent app based on Twiki without diving into PHP. Check ie FeatureToDo page, go to edit. See %SEARCH{ thing? That's all. And you have version control and freetext database. But of course if your goal is not play with Twiki to learn how to do more complicated apps, but have usable black box, you for sure can find some freeware/shareware for it: Google:music+album+catalog+software. But why to aske here, then? I use Twiki for most of my information needs

-- PeterMasiar - 14 Jul 2003

This looks to me like a typical TWikiForms application. The artist and album names are in form fields. You can create a query by example form to search for them. See example TWikiInstallation.

-- PeterThoeny - 20 Jul 2003