Hi there,
We've been using the External Data extension for years now and managed to make it work
really well for us to fetch data from our private wikis onto more public wiki sites.
The new version 3.2 is causing some issues for us. Here is the gist:
Simple values (Semantic property of type text) come through fine with the new method:
{{#external_value:PersonTypeRaw
quote_type
|source=https://commons-new.tsadra.org/index.php?title=Special%3AAsk&q={{urlencode:[[Dorje,
G.]]}}&po=PersonTypeRaw&p%5Bformat%5D=csv
|format=csv
}}
Result:
Authors of English Works
More complex values (Semantic property of type text) however do not (they used to just
fine), the function doesn't seem to fire at all. For the value:
* "The Guhyagarbhatantra and its XIVth Century
Commentary Phyogs-bcu mun-sel." PhD Thesis, SOAS, University of London (3 vols),
1987. See [1]* Dudjom Rinpoche's ''The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism: Its
Fundamentals and History''. Wisdom Publications, Boston. 1st edition (2 vols),
1991; 2nd edition (1 vol), 2002; ISBN 0861711998. See Wisdom Books* ''Tibetan
Medical Paintings''. Serindia Publications, London (2 Vols); ISBN 0-906026-26-1.
1992. See Serindia* ''Tibet Handbook''. Footprint Handbooks, Bath. 1st
edition, 1996; 2nd edition 1999; 3rd edition 2004; ISBN 1900949334 See Footprintbooks*
''Bhutan Handbook''. Footprint Handbooks, Bath. 1st edition, 2004. See
Footprintbooks* ''Tibetan Elemental Divination Paintings'', Eskenazi &
Fogg, London. 2001. See Whiteberyl* ''Tibetan Elemental Divination Paintings:
Illuminated Manuscript from the White Beryl of Sangs-Rgyas Rgya-Mtsho''.
Holberton, Paul Publishing, 2008. ISBN 9780953994106 ISBN 0953994104* ''An
Encyclopaedic Tibetan-English Dictionary'', (Nationalities Publishing House/ SOAS,
Beijing. Vol. 1, 2001). Enquiries: tedic(a)hotmail.com* "A Rare Series of Tibetan
Banners." In ''Pearls of the Orient'', Serindia, 2003. See Serindia*
''The Tibetan Book of the Dead'': First Complete English Translation,
Penguin Classics, 2005.* ''Jokhang: Tibet's Most Sacred Buddhist
Temple'', Thames & Hudson, 2010* ''The Guhyagarbha Tantra: Dispelling
the Darkness of the Ten Directions''. (Snowlion)* ''An Encyclopaedic
Tibetan-English Dictionary''. (Nationalities Publishing House/ SOAS, Beijing.
Vols. 2-3.
Using the function:
{{#external_value:publications
quote_type
|source=https://commons-new.tsadra.org/index.php?title=Special%3AAsk&q={{urlencode:[[Dorje,
G.]]}}&po=publications&p%5Bformat%5D=csv
|format=csv
}}
We get an error as a result:
Error: no local variable "publications" has been set.
Multi-paragraph text values also don't come through properly, only the first paragraph
is displayed. For the value:
Gyurme Dorje (1950 – 5 February 2020) was a Scottish
Tibetologist and writer. He was born in Edinburgh, where he studied classics (Latin and
Greek) at George Watson's College and developed an early interest in Buddhist
philosophy. He held a PhD in Tibetan Literature (SOAS) and an MA in Sanskrit with Oriental
Studies (Edinburgh). In the 1970s he spent a decade living in Tibetan communities in India
and Nepal where he received extensive teachings from Kangyur Rinpoche, Dudjom Rinpoche,
Chatral Rinpoche, and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. In 1971 Dudjom Rinpoche encouraged him to
begin translating his recently completed ''History of the Nyingma Schoo''l
(རྙིང་མའི་སྟན་པའི་ཆོས་འབྱུང་) and in 1980 his ''Fundamentals of the Nyingma
School'' (བསྟན་པའི་རྣམ་གཞག) - together this was an undertaking that was to take
twenty years, only reaching completion in 1991. In the 1980s Gyurme returned to the UK and
in 1987 completed his 3 volume doctoral dissertation on the
''Guhyagarbhatantra'' and Longchenpa's commentary on this text at the
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London.
From 1991 to 1996 Gyurme held research fellowships at London University, where he worked
with Alak Zenkar Rinpoche on translating (with corrections) the content of the Great
Sanskrit Tibetan Chinese Dictionary to create the three volume ''Encyclopaedic
Tibetan-English Dictionary''. From 2007 until his death he worked on many
translation projects, primarily as a Tsadra Foundation grantee. He has written, edited,
translated and contributed to numerous important books on Tibetan religion and culture
including ''The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism: Its Fundamentals and
History'' (2 vols.) (Wisdom, 1991), ''Tibetan Medical Paintings''
( 2 vols.) (Serindia, 1992), ''The Tibet Handbook'' (Footprint, 1996), the
first complete translation of the ''Tibetan Book of the Dead'', and
''A Handbook of Tibetan Culture'' (Shambhala, 1994).
([
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyurme_Dorje Source Accessed Jul 14, 2020])
Using:
{{#external_value:bio
quote_type
|source=https://commons-new.tsadra.org/index.php?title=Special%3AAsk&q={{urlencode:[[Dorje,
G.]]}}&po=bio&p%5Bformat%5D=csv
|format=csv
}}
We get:
Gyurme Dorje (1950 – 5 February 2020) was a Scottish Tibetologist and writer. He was born
in Edinburgh, where he studied classics (Latin and Greek) at George Watson's College
and developed an early interest in Buddhist philosophy. He held a PhD in Tibetan
Literature (SOAS) and an MA in Sanskrit with Oriental Studies (Edinburgh). In the 1970s he
spent a decade living in Tibetan communities in India and Nepal where he received
extensive teachings from Kangyur Rinpoche, Dudjom Rinpoche, Chatral Rinpoche, and Dilgo
Khyentse Rinpoche. In 1971 Dudjom Rinpoche encouraged him to begin translating his
recently completed History of the Nyingma School (རྙིང་མའི་སྟན་པའི་ཆོས་འབྱུང་) and in 1980
his Fundamentals of the Nyingma School (བསྟན་པའི་རྣམ་གཞག) - together this was an
undertaking that was to take twenty years, only reaching completion in 1991. In the 1980s
Gyurme returned to the UK and in 1987 completed his 3 volume doctoral dissertation on the
Guhyagarbhatantra and Longchenpa's commentary on this text at the School of Oriental
and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London.
For the full list of values you can fetch from our commons site, go here.
We have even tried using curl to fetch the data and it all comes through fine:
• curl
'https://commons.tsadra.org/index.php?title=Special%3AAsk&q=%5B%5BDorje%2C+G.%5D%5D&po=PersonTypeRaw&p%5Bformat%5D=csv'
• curl
'https://commons.tsadra.org/index.php?title=Special%3AAsk&q=%5B%5BDorje%2C+G.%5D%5D&po=Bio&p%5Bformat%5D=csv'
• curl
'https://commons.tsadra.org/index.php?title=Special%3AAsk&q=%5B%5BDorje%2C+G.%5D%5D&po=Publications&p%5Bformat%5D=csv'
Could it be an issue with the extension's code?
The wiki from which we are fetching data is:
Product
Version
MediaWiki
1.35.6
PHP
7.4.30 (apache2handler)
MariaDB
10.9.3-MariaDB-1:10.9.3+maria~ubu2204
ICU
67.1
Lua
5.1.5
Elasticsearch
6.8.23
with
Semantic MediaWiki
3.2.3
The wiki onto which we are bringing the data is:
Product
Version
MediaWiki
1.35.6
PHP
7.4.30 (apache2handler)
MariaDB
10.10.2-MariaDB-1:10.10.2+maria~ubu2204
ICU
67.1
Lua
5.1.5
Elasticsearch
6.8.23
with
Semantic MediaWiki
3.2.3
Thanks for any suggestions. Would really appreciate the help.
All the best,
Jeremi Plazas
Assistant Director of Research
jplazas(a)tsadra.org
Tsadra Foundation
Tsadra.org
Translation & Transmission Conferences
Buddha-Nature
DharmaCloud
Rinchen Terdzö
Damngak Dzö
Advancing the combined study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism