Family Historian User Group

strName = fhGetItemText(pi,'INDI.CENS[year=1911].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL')

works fine.

So does

strCens='INDI.CENS[year=1911].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL'
strName = fhGetItemText(pi,strCens)

But

strCens=''INDI.CENS[year=1911].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL''
strName = fhGetItemText(pi,strCens)

does not.

Hence nor does

strCens=''INDI.CENS[year='..strDate..'].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL''.
strName = fhGetItemText(pi,strCens)

where strDate is a user input.

Is there a way of doing this, i.e. having a user input date in the fhGetItemText function?

Martin

ID:6444

In the How to Write Plugins help, see the Introduction to Lua > Lua Quick Guide sub-section on STRINGS.

Also see Lua 5.1 Reference Manual very near the beginning under 2.1 - Lexical Conventions it defines Literal strings.

'INDI.CENS[year=1911].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL' is a text string using single quote delimiters.
'INDI.CENS[year=1911].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL' is an identical text string using double quotes.
INDI.CENS[year=1911].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL is the actual text string in both cases.

''INDI.CENS[year=1911].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL'' defines a different text string:-
'INDI.CENS[year=1911].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL' as it has a single quote character at front and back.
(This is a technique for including single quote chars in a text string).
c.f.
''INDI.CENS[year=1911].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL'' defines
'INDI.CENS[year=1911].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL'
(This is a technique for including double quote chars in a text string).

The following will all work OK providing that strYear is a four digit string:-
Use single quotes
strName = fhGetItemText(pi,'INDI.CENS[year='..strYear..'].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL')
or use double quotes
strName = fhGetItemText(pi,'INDI.CENS[year='..strYear..'].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL')
or even single quotes and double quotes
strName = fhGetItemText(pi,'INDI.CENS[year='..strYear..'].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL')
or single quotes in a variable
strCens='INDI.CENS[year='..strYear..'].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL'
strName = fhGetItemText(pi,strCens)
or double quotes in a variable
strCens='INDI.CENS[year='..strYear..'].SOUR[1]>OBJE[1]>TITL'
strName = fhGetItemText(pi,strCens)

(Any number of digits in strYear would also be syntactically OK, but there are no Census years before 1790).

Right, thanks Mike.

I understand that now. I'll give them a try although I thought I'd already tried at least one of those.

Thanks again.

Martin

Don't forget you can use the debug to check the value of your data reference string, if you build it as a variable before use.

Yes, thanks Jane. I'm getting there, but it's a fairly steep learning curve from when I played around with VB years ago. The main problem was with strings that had accidental spaces at the beginning. I only found them by checking string length against the output where it wasn't obvious.

I finally have a working version that reads all the files (census images) that I have stored in a given census date folder. It then reads all the multimedia that FH holds for the same year and picks out the names that have a file not linked in.

It also showed up some anomalies in my file naming system which helped rationalise things.

As I said previously, I don't think this is worth uploading, because any other user would have to edit it to match their filepaths.

Thanks for the help,

Martin