abobymous Posted June 29, 2019 Report Share Posted June 29, 2019 Hi all - We are seeing a strange thing happening with external links to images. After importing the ancestry.com gedcom the media items appear to be correctly linked to their respective People and Families. However, the button to "View item..." is not appearing. I'll try to describe the behavior with a bunch of screen snips. (main Question is at end of this post.) This first image shows what is happening when viewing the photo. The external photo is not loading. I'm not really worried about the filename not showing the entire URL. This is likely because Ancestry doesn't allow it. That's fine but isn't the problem. In the Edit screen TNG shows the full URL and the "external checkbox" unselected. When I click the external checkbox the URL field is blanked out. After I either, 1) leave the box unchecked and paste in the Owner/Source, or 2) check the box and re-paste the Media URL I get the View Item... button as expected. My question is: Is there a way to correct the condition where these external links are not displaying the View Item button correctly? ///Bob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Roy Posted June 29, 2019 Report Share Posted June 29, 2019 A URL to the failing links would be a lot more helpful for us to provide recommendations on how to fix the issue Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abobymous Posted June 30, 2019 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2019 Ken, I sent the URL to you privately. Thank you for offering to take a look. I want to clarify just to make sure we're on the same page. The media links work fine when they get "Registered" with TNG. The main question is, should we expect that external links (URLs) automatically get "registered" when importing a gedcom? The other usability behavior described in the original post are lower priority and an opportunity to tighten up the user experience. Again though, I'm troubleshooting whether or not external media links should be auto-registered when importing a gedcom. Thanks again; this community is really great! ---Bob cc: @manofmull Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Roy Posted June 30, 2019 Report Share Posted June 30, 2019 6 hours ago, abobymous said: I want to clarify just to make sure we're on the same page. The media links work fine when they get "Registered" with TNG. The main question is, should we expect that external links (URLs) automatically get "registered" when importing a gedcom? Bob, I am sorry, I do not know the answer to that question. I did not realize you were talking about importing media links that point to an external source. While I use a lot of external links in my Military History collection, I do not import media. All my media is created and managed in TNG. I also do not have a tree on Ancestry and importing from Ancestry might also be a different challenge. I have never checked the GEDCOM specifications to see if media could be specified as external links. Media as used in TNG is very different than most genealogy programs allow. Most of them recognize only photos and a few might recognize document categories. User collections, which I use are a TNG feature. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abobymous Posted June 30, 2019 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2019 The media feature in TNG is really cool. Being able to point to items stored at a different location (URL) is a very powerful feature. I like how TNG handles media. 😃 How do I get in front of Darrin to discuss this? Simply put, TNG supports URLs to offsite media but when they are loaded they do not work. Have a great rest of your weekend, Bob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abobymous Posted June 30, 2019 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2019 Mike, I'll email him. I also looked at the Mod referenced above and it was very informative. Thank you. If you don't mind I will practice my argument here. (😃) Please share your thoughts, advice. I really appreciate the experience avail here in the forums. Straight-forward Media items not requiring additional analysis, record creation or associations should be registered fully with TNG during gedcom import. (More complicated scenarios are not in scope.) If it is true that media items using a URL have little to no usability (or lead to a dead end experience in the orig post) then any such media should be Imported in a way that registers them fully. Stated another way, what's the harm with flipping the internal registration flag ON when the filename is a fully qualified URL? **respectfully and with an earnest focus on improving how TNG delights users...** Further, my position based on professional experience is that workarounds are not good enough if it is always required. (Forgive me if gedcoms from other sources work properly in exactly this same situation. If that's the case an opportunity for improvement has been exposed.) Similarly a Mod should not be required to always get expected behavior, IMO. Rather, the handling code should be updated /made more robust ( I hesitate to say fixed). Let me know if you have differing thoughts, advice or guidance that may clarify how I may approach this with Darrin. Cheers y'all, ---Bob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Roy Posted June 30, 2019 Report Share Posted June 30, 2019 Bob, You will need to provide Darrin a snippet from GEDCOM that shows the entries for what you are calling external media links TNG handles external URLs that are parts of Notes without creating Media records, so to me the question is what is in the .ged file that causes these external links to be imported as Media records. Without seeing a snippet of your .ged file, one can only guess as to what it happening. The .ged file extract will be needed for Darrin to improve the media import Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abobymous Posted June 30, 2019 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2019 Here's a snip of an example. It is the entire INDI record. I'll compose a message to Darrin and shoot it off. Solution may boil down to determining the FILE segment is "external" as opposed to a "path." This makes sense based on the workaround in the O.P. 0 @P1080@ INDI 1 SEX M 1 NAME Joseph /Turgeon/ 1 OBJE 2 _PRIM Y 2 FILE http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=5c6e5e3b-dedb-4523-8301-50e809c87367&tid=81340298&pid=1080 2 FORM jpg 2 TITL 1768-03-04 Turgeon Joseph - individu - naissance 1 FAMC @F248@ 1 FAMS @F247@ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theKiwi Posted June 30, 2019 Report Share Posted June 30, 2019 1 hour ago, abobymous said: Solution may boil down to determining the FILE segment is "external" as opposed to a "path." This makes sense based on the workaround in the O.P. 0 @P1080@ INDI 1 SEX M 1 NAME Joseph /Turgeon/ 1 OBJE 2 _PRIM Y 2 FILE http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=5c6e5e3b-dedb-4523-8301-50e809c87367&tid=81340298&pid=1080 2 FORM jpg 2 TITL 1768-03-04 Turgeon Joseph - individu - naissance 1 FAMC @F248@ 1 FAMS @F247@ I think the main problem here is that the 2 FILE is listed directly under an INDI record, with nothing prior saying that this is actually a media item What is actually at that link - according to Ancestry it's broken. Roger Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abobymous Posted June 30, 2019 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2019 Here is a snip of the A.com page after clicking through from my site. I also received the "no longer available" message when going directly through a new tab, so Ancestry is likely doing some anti-site-ripping checks on it. It's just a photo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abobymous Posted June 30, 2019 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2019 Here is some fun technical info. I queried the media table in the DB and pulled before and after for two examples. The before state is the same for both so I only included it once. In example 1, all I did was check the "External" box when Editing the Media item. This appears to be very straightforward and makes sense. In example 2, the external checkbox WAS NOT selected but the Owner was set to http://www.ancestry.com. Both examples properly show the "View Item..." button when viewing the media (see screen snip in OP) It appears that when either the <absPath> or the <owner> column is set, TNG with go to the <path>. If the item cannot be loaded it displays the View Item... button, which is the behavior we want. Possible solutions to present to the Devs could be: 1) A new option in the Admin // Import settings to mark all media items (OBJE) as external if the FILE segment begins with http:// or https:// (the URL essentially documents the source), or 2) for media items with a FILE segment beginning with http:// or https://, add the Owner/Source information by parsing out the hostname. (a bit more complicated but some users may want to document in this way). Good stuff! *the ancestry.com links may not work for you because of the permissions and anti-ripping protections that A.com has on those pages. The examples are single photos. after gedcom import after checking "external" box after adding the owner (not checking the box) different example, mediaID mediaID 1041 1041 1245 mediatypeID photos photos photos mediakey http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=5c6e5e3b... http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=5c6e5e3b... http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=94391ee0... gedcom 808 808 808 form JPG path http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=5c6e5e3b... http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=5c6e5e3b... http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=94391ee0... description 1768-03-04 Turgeon Joseph - individu - naissance 1768-03-04 Turgeon Joseph - individu - naissance 1910 census datetaken NULL placetaken NULL notes NULL owner NULL http://www.ancestry.com thumbpath NULL alwayson NULL 0 0 map NULL abspath NULL 1 <--makes sense 0 <-- ?? See owner above status NULL 0 showmap NULL 0 0 cemeteryID NULL 0 0 plot NULL linktocem NULL 0 0 longitude NULL latitude NULL zoom NULL 0 0 width NULL 0 0 height NULL 0 bodytext NULL <br> <br> usenl 0 0 newwindow 0 0 usecollfolder 1 1 1 changedate 2019-06-29 9:24:16 2019-06-30 15:37:43 2019-06-30 15:58:17 changedby abobymous abobymous Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Roy Posted June 30, 2019 Report Share Posted June 30, 2019 1 hour ago, abobymous said: Here is a snip of the A.com page after clicking through from my site. I also received the "no longer available" message when going directly through a new tab, so Ancestry is likely doing some anti-site-ripping checks on it. It's just a photo. Well this is just a photo of an entry from the Drouin Collection which is also a subscription service from the University of Montreal. I do not have a tree on Ancestry for multiple reasons but recognize the images which might come from another site Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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