daDrill - The graphical BibTeX browser

Local documents

Requirements

daDrill has been reported to work correctly with the following minimal configuration. It is expected to work with versions much inferior to the ones listed here, since daDrill does not use much advanced features of these components. If you installed daDrill on systems that lower these bounds, contact us.

• PHP 5.0.2
• MySQL 4.1.13
• If daDrill is to be used locally, your computer must also host a web server. Apache 2.0.53 is known to work
• a web browser compliant with XHTML 1.1 and CSS 1.0. Mozilla Firefox 1.0 meets these requirements, but other browsers (and especially old versions) might show functional but ugly-looking pages. You are warned.

Introduction

daDrill is a web-based graphical tool for managing a collection of bibliographical references. daDrill allows the user to add references, browse the available references, query the database for keywords. In addition, daDrill automatically indexes author names when adding a reference, so papers can also be grouped by author.

daDrill is made to be compatible with the BibTeX format. New entries can be entered by copy-pasting a BibTeX file. Entries are internally stored by preserving all BibTeX fields. Moreover, each entry can be re-exported as a well-formatted BibTeX string. Author names that are automatically added are automatically split into 4 parts in the same way as BibTeX does.

In addition to standard support for all BibTeX fields, daDrill also offers a few extended features. A plain-text comment can be entered for every reference, thus providing additional annotations for the user of the database. In addition to the regular URL BibTeX field, daDrill allows the user to store a reference to a local PS or PDF file. In the "paper details" view, an clickable icon links to the local file that can be immediately opened.

Installation

Quick install

1. Unzip the distribution in your web server's document root.
   • For example, a default installation of Apache on a local Windows machine has the root named C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs.
   • Typical of a remote server is a directory called httpdocs.
   If you don't have access to your web server's root, you can unzip the files locally in a temporary directory, and once the changes are all made, upload the directory to the server.
2. Make sure the PHP files have the proper owner. In some configurations, trying to execute scripts that have a different owner than the executor might cause problems.
3. Open the file config.inc.php in a text editor and enter your values for host, user and password to access the database. Make sure that you have the permission to create and drop tables in that database. If you don't, go to the section Manual creation of tables. Go to the Configuration section for an explanation of all the values.
4. Open the file http://host/dadrill/index.php in your browser, where host should be replaced by the actual name of your web server (for example, www.servername.com). In the case of a local installation, the host is localhost.
5. daDrill now looks in the given database if the required tables and fields exist.
   • If they don't, which is the normal situation when installing for the first time, you will be asked if you want daDrill to create them.
   • If they do, you will be led to the welcome page and are ready to use daDrill.

Upgrading from an older version

Prior to installing the new version, make sure to backup all your references as a BibTeX file; choose Maintenance/Export all references and safely store the output file. This additional step is due to the fact that the newer version of daDrill might save its data in a slightly different format in the database and might require the older database to be wiped.

Once you have made your backup, you can safely copy the new files over the old ones. You can also safely overwrite your old config.inc.php over the new installation; default values for possible new parameters will be assumed.

Setting up the database

This section deals with the proper setting up of the MySQL database.

First, you must make sure daDrill has access to a database on the MySQL server. There is no restriction on the name the database must have, as long as you provide the same name in the config.ing.php file.

For its installation, daDrill requires that this database has two tables called author and publication with some number of fields already created. If you have permission to perform CREATE and DROP MySQL operations on the provided database name, daDrill can automatically create these tables in the proper format. If you don't, you must ask your system administrator to set up these tables for you. See the section Table details for more information.

For its normal use, once the databases have been created, daDrill must only be able to perform SELECT, INSERT and DELETE operations on the two tables. If you needed you system administrator to create the tables, make sure to ask him to grant you these permissions on the tables.

Configuration

This section explains the meaning and possible values for all configuration parameters. These parameters can be modified by editing the file config.inc.php.

$config["ddDBHost"] (string)

The hostname or IP address of the MySQL server. For local installation, this value is likely to be localhost.

$config["ddDBUser"] and $config["ddDBPassword"] (strings)

The user/password pair daDrill uses to access the MySQL server.

$config["ddDBName"] (string)

The database name where daDrill's tables are located. This information might be imposed by your system administrator in the case where you do not have permissions to create tables. If daDrill automatically creates the tables when installing, it will do so in the specified database.

$config["ddDBMode"] (string)

The access mode daDrill uses with the database. Technically, this chooses the PHP extension to access MySQL. Accepted values are:

• mysql: standard method for accessing the MySQL database
• mysqli: PHP MySQL improved extension, must be used with MySQL 4.1 and higher. Note that this mode needs PHP 5.0 or better.

$config["ddAuthorCols"] (integer)

Default number of columns shown in the author list. This number can be changed by using the links Switch to n-1 columns and Switch n+1 columns; however, if the author list is called without arguments, the default number of columns is displayed.

$config["ddDefaultPubDir"] (string)

Default directory for local PS/PDF files.

Table details

FAQ

I cannot load my local PS/PDF files when clicking on the link in the Paper details page.

Make sure the $config["ddDefaultPubDir"] parameter is correctly set. Also note that the specified directory must be under the root of the web server. For example, writing /pub/ points to a folder called pub under the root of the web server. On a