This document provides a system description of the on-line (WWW) searchable implementation (data and code) of Jeremy Wilkinson's Gazetteer and Bibliography of the Mines and Quarries of North Wales.
It is provided primarily for anyone who may have to maintain the data, the system as a whole or anyone who may have to port the system to a new server.
The following objectives were adopted:
System functionality is partitioned between:
Communication between these subsystems in the form of HTTP requests and responses. Each search request from the UI generates only a single HTTP request and its response.
This is structured as:
The query form uses drop-down menus for the majority of search terms and the minimum of free text fields. The use of menus guides the user in formulating searches and restricts the amount of input validation required to just the two free text input fields. These fields are validated as follows:
‘name’ input field valid entries:
‘place’ field valid entries:
Responses to user queries in the form of text or map images are displayed in a delineated response display area.
This is a collection of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and map marker image files. For each type of query (site, entity and grant) there is an HTML file and a corresponding JavaScript file. A further JavaScript file contains common functions etc. and there is a common CSS file to control overall styling.
The UI:
The web browser window can be resized without affecting system functionality.
The UI has been tested and appears to operate correctly with Firefox, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera and Safari web browsers on Apple Macinstosh and Safari on Apple iPad.
This is a collection of Perl CGI scripts and supporting Perl modules. Perl was chosen as the scripting language because of the author’s familiarity with it.
The server software:
Data files are flat files which are searched sequentially. A database was not used on the grounds of simplicity of data maintenance and code complexity.
Each script is invoked once per user request and terminates once the request is satisfied.
The optional URL argument DEBUG will invoke the following data maintenance and debugging facilities:
DEBUG=1 | Used for data maintenance: site and entity ids are shown in output (in red) and a ‘Refresh’ button is shown in gazetteer entries so that changes to data can be seen as soon as those changes have been made and the display refreshed. |
DEBUG=2 | Used for UI development: as DEBUG=1 plus raw query, response and some other data are written to browser JavaScript console log. |
index.html | Gazetteer ‘front page’ with an introduction to the system and link to the gazetteer search page. It includes acknowledgments and copyright information. |
README.html | This file |
changeLog.html | System change log |
gazetteerData.html | Background information for users about the origin of, and subsequent changes to, the data used by the gazetteer. |
User interface: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, map marker images etc.
index.html | Gazetteer user interface ‘front page’ |
entity.html | Search form and results display for individuals, companies and organisations |
entity.js | JavaScript for entity.html |
grant.html | Search form and results display for crown grants |
grant.js | JavaScript for grant.html |
site.html | Search form and results display for mine and quarry searches |
site.js | JavaScript for site.html |
wilkinson.css | Style sheet for above HTML files |
wilkinson.js | Common JavaScript functions for the above HTML files |
jquery.js | jQuery JavaScript API library (renamed from jQuery 3.5.1.js) |
marker_blue.png marker_red.png | Image files for site markers on map display |
Perl 5 CGI scripts (.cgi) and include files (.pm)
entity.cgi | Individual, company and organisation search |
grant.cgi | Crown grant search |
site.cgi | Mine and quarry site search |
osgb.pm | Conversion routines for latitude/longitude to/from OS British national grid and alphanumberic numeric to/from numeric grid references. Used by site.cgi. The code used for conversions between GB OS grid and latitude/logitude and their supporting subroutines is directly derived from Toby Thurston's Perl cpan OSGB.pm package Copyright © Toby Thurston (toby@cpan.org) 2002–2013. |
wilkinson.pm | Common functions for CGI scripts. This module contains file names and file record formats (used with unpack() expressions) for the above scripts. |
Identifiers in code generally have meaningful names. Comments are generally minimal.
CGI development has used Perl v5.018.004
The design philosophy is:
File content:
ENTITY.dat | Individual, company and organisation names – each entity has a 5-digit identifier |
GRANT.dat | Crown grants |
SITE.dat | Mine and quarry sites – each site has a 5-digit identifier |
EMPLOYMENT.dat | Numbers of men employed above and below ground at sites |
OBJECTS.dat | Limited company objects clause text |
POSTCODE.dat PLACE.dat | British grid references for post codes and place names – used by site.cgi when searching for sites within a specified distance of a postcode area or named place |
PRODUCTION.dat | Production records for sites |
REFERENCE.dat | Bibliographical references for sites. When displayed, reference page numbers are de-duplicated, page ranges are elided correctly, overlapping and contained page number ranges are normalised and references are sorted for output. |
ROLE.dat | Associates entities with roles and years active at sites (e.g. agent) or in companies (e.g. company director) |
Used to expand various fixed-length codes in data files for county, parish, product etc. to human-readable text.
COUNTY.dat | County identifier in GRANT.dat and SITE.dat to county name e.g. M translates to ‘Merioneth’ |
GRANT_TYPE.dat | Grant type id in GRANT.dat to grant type e.g. 3 translates to ‘take note’ |
NLS_MAP.dat | Map series identifier and sheet number in REFERENCE.dat to NLS sheet file name and survey/revision and publication dates (used to create links to maps on NLS website) |
PARISH.dat | Parish identifier in GRANT.dat and SITE.dat to parish name e.g. AM translates to ‘Llanaber’ |
PRODUCT.dat | Product identifier in SITE.dat to product name e.g. MN translates to ‘manganese’ |
ROLE_NAME.dat | Role identifier in ROLE.dat to role name e.g. AG translates to ‘Agent’ |
SOURCE.dat | Source identifier in REFERENCE.dat to source title e.g. 013 translates to ‘Inspector of Mines Reports’ |
Data maintenance utilities (not available on public server)
checkData.cgi | Error and consistency checks on gazetteer data. This checks for:
|
wilkinson.pm | Common functions for CGI utility scripts (alias to wilkinson.pm in Wilkinson/cgi/ directory) |
index.html | Redirection page following directory reorganisations 9 May 2020 |
The main external dependency is the use of the Ordnance Survey's Data Hub map service to source OS map tiles used for maps on which site locations can be shown.
The Leaflet open-source JavaScript library is used to provide map display and related functionality.
The jQuery JavaScript library is used to simplify the JavaScript code.
The gazetteer reference data contain links to a number of external sites. In particular use is made of National Library of Scotland's online historic OS maps. All external links open in a new window and their non-availablity does not affect the operation of the gazetteer.
An appropriate Web server and Perl interpreter installation is required.
The directory should be put in a suitable location for the web server to serve the html pages and execute the CGI scripts. (The server configuration should allow execution of the CGI scripts.) The system footprint is approximately 2.3 MByte.
CGI scripts should have ‘execute’ permission set for the server process. (If in doubt use 'world' to allow execution by any process.)
An API key for the Ordnance Survey data is required.