MWeb™ Universal Administrator's Guide

4. Using MWeb Features

Sorting Search Results

When you do a search, MWeb returns the results in a default sort order, as follows:

First sorted alphabetically by Database Code, as shown in the list of Databases.
Subsorted alphabetically by the tablenames in the Database (by Subset Number for MWeb Enterprise Databases, PastPerfect-Online Databases, and PastPerfect Export Databases).
Subsorted alphabetically by the record IDs (the unique identifiers of records in each Database).

In Release 2.0 and later, you may modify #3, the order in which individual records are sorted. Sorting is not case-sensitive. You may specify one field or more; see Configuring Tables for how to do this.

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Direct Access (future feature)

Direct Access is an MWeb feature that permits users to go directly to content without going through the MWeb Start Page. You can then provide links from other websites directly into Keyword Search Results or Full Records.

Terminology

A Direct Access "link" is like any other HTML link; that is, it looks like this:

     <a href="URL">Link text</a>

The "Link text" is what the user sees and clicks on. When the user clicks on the Link text, the browser navigates to the URL specified in the "href" attribute.

The following sections describe how to construct the URLs for the "href" attributes of your links. Remember, the entire URL is case-insensitive in MWeb.

Keyword Searches

For Keyword Searches, the URL consists of these segments; each segment is shown separately, for clarity, but they should be concatenated with no spaces in your link:

URL segment	Notes
http://www.example.org	Change www.example.org to your museum's domain name
/unicgi/mwebuni.exe	This specifies the URL is for the MWeb program. Replace Uni with the project code.
?request=keyword	This is the request type, telling MWeb this is a keyword search
;dtype=i	Add this parameter if you wish to search only records with images (see example 2)
;keyword=yyy	Replace yyy with the keyword(s) to be searched. Do NOT use quotation marks. Separate multiple keywords with spaces, as in examples 3 and 4.
;db=zzz	Optional: Replace zzz with the Database ID* to limit the search to one or more Databases; repeat this parameter for multiple Databases (see example 5).
;ct=zzz	Optional: Replace zzz with the Subset ID* to limit the search to one or more Subsets; repeat this parameter for multiple Subsets (see example 6). ("ct" stands for "Content Type" for historical reasons.)

* There is a link in the Project Parameters display to get the Database and Subset IDs, or if you do not have Administrator permission, use this URL: http://www.example.org/unicgi/mwebuni.exe?request=project

Examples:

1) http://www.example.org/unicgi/mwebuni.exe?request=keyword;keyword=basket
2) http://www.example.org/unicgi/mwebuni.exe?request=keyword;dtype=i;keyword=basket
3) http://www.example.org/unicgi/mwebuni.exe?request=keyword;keyword=annie oakley
4) http://www.example.org/unicgi/mwebuni.exe?request=keyword;keyword=rifles or guns
5) http://www.example.org/unicgi/mwebuni.exe?request=keyword;keyword=rifles;db=2;db=3
6) http://www.example.org/unicgi/mwebuni.exe?request=keyword;keyword=rifles;ct=5;ct=6

Full Records

For Full Records, the URL consists of these parts; each segment is shown separately, for clarity, but they should be concatenated with no spaces in your link:

URL segment	Notes
http://www.example.org	Change www.example.org to your museum's domain name
/unicgi/mwebuni.exe	This specifies the URL is for the MWeb program. Replace Uni with the project code.
?request=record	This is the request type, telling MWeb this is a full record request
;key=yyy	Replace yyy with the tablename and unique ID of the record, separated by a period

Example:

     http://www.example.org/unicgi/mwebuni.exe?request=record;key=object.157

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