Template talk:Cite DCB

2008
The Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online appears to have been restructured. The links generated by this template no longer function. --Big_iron (talk) 16:19, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

See template. --Big_iron (talk) 10:15, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Wrapper to cite encyclopedia
I have restructured the template so that it is a wrapper around cite encyclopedia. This presents the information displayed in a standard format. It still handles the two parameters in the same way, but two new ones have been added.

The first is ref= this works the same way as in all the standard cite templates such as etc and allows the template to be used as a general reference and linked to a short citation.

The second volume=number or volume=Roman numeral and it will fill in additional details, including editors and year of publication. This is done using a switch statement in the code for example:

If volume parameter is set then set editor2-first and editor2-last parameters to the appropriate values depending on what value is passed into volume. The  means that the parameter editor2-first is not set to empty and passed in as a parameter to cite encyclopedia unless volume is set (this helps to reduce the likelihood of the mishandling of empty parameters lower down the food chain).



This information was taken from the article Dictionary of Canadian Biography and may need slight modification if the text of the article does not give all the details of who was the second editor in previous years. -- PBS (talk) 06:08, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Unexpected discovery: two types of URLs for Dictionary of Canadian Biography
Copied from my talk page:  At the Étienne Guy article, I came across this external link:
 * http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=36565

Note the difference from the usual URL. This "BioId" number is not the same, it fails if put into a template.

Doing a search for the name at the DCB website produced a conventional URL:
 * http://biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=2443

Just wanted to let you know in case you were unaware of these old "BioId" URLs. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 15:24, 10 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I did not put in the ID number parameter which uses http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=2443 (Étienne Guy) -- that was here before I started to edit the template. The simplest solution is to add a warning to the template documentation. Other solutions that keep that a backwards compatible are more complicated and would take more research (for example do the range of numbers overlap?). -- PBS (talk) 08:50, 11 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't think the template needs to be changed in any way, we should just replace the old external links with the new ones where found (which requires doing a lookup at biographi.ca). And once that's done, they might as well be turned into  into the bargain.  The old links seem to be pretty rare, and they still work, actually, so it's not a priority.  We just need to be aware, so as not to carelessly convert an old link into a  and retain the old number (I have a nagging feeling I did that once inadvertently, a few weeks ago), because that results in a broken link. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 13:42, 11 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I ran a systematic scan over all invocations of (and its two redirected alternate templates) and found only two instances where it was called with a five-digit ID parameter (or first unnamed parameter).  I guess it's still possible that some BioID values were only four digits, though, in which case they'd be hard to distinguish. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 15:30, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Not Passing Through Access Date
The template doesn't seem to be currently passing through accessdate. Should it? I understand it's unlikely for these bio's to change, but probably best if the param is given to pass it through. — Strongjam (talk) 21:42, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Volume III
When editing some articles that are in DCB volume III, I noticed the editor was not displayed. I see in the template that volume III is not listed for editor (but it is for the other volume-determined parameters). Best as can see, Francess G. Halpenny was the editor for volume III. Not sure why volume III was missed/not included. I will add it to the template. But fee free to let me know if it is not there for a reason (don't want to screw up the template).Darrend1967 (talk) 01:53, 12 January 2016 (UTC)