End of the Search Engine? - CWGC Search Changes

That's potentially a chunk of work wasted on the first 2000 casualties I've completed on my Royal Artillery project!!

$!*%?£ great!!

 

The WW2 engine is back in business, using the pdf links.
These are rather poor quality.

cheers
geoff

Fantastic news, Geoff!

 

Thank goodness, be lost without our boy Geoff's searcher.!!!!!!

 

Sorry, not being a computer expert, does this mean that not only are the hundreds of links from my Bury Roll of Honour to CWGC now useless but I can't even get my technical bods to devise a new algorithm to replace them?

 

Sorry, not being a computer expert, does this mean that not only are the hundreds of links from my Bury Roll of Honour to CWGC now useless but I can't even get my technical bods to devise a new algorithm to replace them?

Not easily; you have to work out the pdf location for each of them now.

 

Cough ...Tossers !

 

I'm not very familiar with this search engine but I'm posting this from what I have gathered so please excuse any misunderstandings.

Why not just use a script to pull the data and store it locally? That way any future changes would have a minimal impact on your site. That's what Canada at War is doing with the information the Canadian government is providing, I've seen similar things done with US sites who provide US service records?

Unless it's against the TOS of course.

 

Converting links?
testing it on one of Phil's previous casualty links:

New pdf link -
http://www.cwgc.org/PDFHandler.ashx?t=a2&ca=3119156&ce=0&me=0&ma=0

Old (now dead) link -
http://www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_details.aspx?casualty=3119156

Looks like that ID number (3119156) remains the same (I assume this is why Geoff's machine could still function with some tweaking of the output?), which may at least simplify a bit of cut and paste correction to old links. .

The Pdf link works without all that gubbins after the identifying number -

http://www.cwgc.org/PDFHandler.ashx?t=a2&ca=3119156

So a bit of 'Find and Replace' from the edit menu, (if the program people have used to store their links allows it) may just work on individual's databases.

~A

Top Marks that man, yes it work's although when Ive used the hyper links ive added the casualties name, so coppying the casualty reference isnt as straight forward, but it does work.

 

Typical making changes for changes sake and to the detriment of all.

Cheers
Paul

 

Very glad to hear it Phil.
So excel can do it en-masse.

It may be possible for people to use their website creation software, or just plain HTML editor, to find & replace URLs for the corrected ones, but it's not something I know enough about to really comment.

~A

Well I havemt found a way to do it enmasse yet, but will have a play and see what I can do.

P

If I hadnt typed the casualty details over the hyper link, I would have been quite easy, but now im going to have to type each reference into the new script

 

If anyone wishes to do all my VC and GC chaps let me know and I'll give you my password

 

Back in the early days of the CWGC website, I'm sure it had a 'proper' advanced search feature before some much trumpeted infrastructure upgrade. Was that actually the case?

 

Cough ...Tossers !

I think you're on to something there mate.



When sh1t happens, best thing is a joke:

Donald Duck and Daisy Duck were spending the night together in a hotel room and Donald wanted to have sex with Daisy.
The first thing Daisy asked was, “Do you have a condom?”
Donald frowned and said, “No.”
Daisy told Donald that if he didn't get a condom, they could not have sex.
“Maybe they sell them at the front desk,” she suggested.
So Donald went down to the lobby and asked the hotel clerk if they had condoms.
“'Yes, we do,” the clerk said and pulled a box out from under the counter and gave it to Donald.
The clerk asked, “Would you like me to put them on your bill?”
“'No!” quacked Donald, “I'll thuffocate . . . .”

 

Phil, Excel has a 'replace' option under it's edit menu.
If you enter:

http://www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_...aspx?casualty=
in the 'find' box.

&
http://www.cwgc.org/PDFHandler.ashx?t=a2&ca=
in the 'replace' box.

Theory says it should then convert all the links into the new usable form, and leave the unique ID number as the correct one.

To be trialed on a smaller database first before risking any funny business on the main one though, and I don't know how deeply it can be made to check into Hyperlinks.

~A

Edit - sorry mate, cross-post, I re-read & see you've already reached that point - can you disable all hyperlinks in excel?

Im not sure Ad, going to have to do some digging on this one