Archives in Fiction: Technical information

The Archives in Fiction database is accessed via a single perl script called archives.cgi. This is GPLed, and available for download using the link below, for anyone who wants to use or adapt it for another site. It currently fetches its data from a mysql database, though on principle should work with any SQL database engine for which a suitable perl DBD module is available.

The script is 'copyleft'-ed by its author and licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It is free software, and may be redistributed and/or modified as required, under the terms of the GPL (qv). Download and see top of script for details.

To download and set up the script for another website:

  1. Set up a directory for the script (or use your cgi-bin directory if preferred/mandated by your ISP).
  2. Create a subdirectory for the config information: this will contain your database connection details, so should only be readable by the user running the CGI script.
  3. Download the following files into the main script directory:
  4. Download the myconfig.txt file, rename it to myconfig.pl and move it into the subdirectory created at step (2).
  5. Edit the $datadir variable setting near the top of archives.cgi, to point to the subdirectory created at step (2).
  6. Create an index.html file (and/or steal and adapt mine).
  7. Download the archives.sql file, and import this into your SQL database to create the required tables. (The actual table names can be altered: if you do so, change the setings in your myconfig.pl file to match.)
  8. Download the messages.sql file, and import this also into your SQL database. This creates and populates a table holding the messages used in the screens: change table name in this file and in myconfig.pl if required, as in archives.sql.
  9. Change settings in your myconfig.pl file as required (see comments within that file).

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