Web Search - My Heritage and My Heritage Library Edition

[riwebb]

My local library recently switched their genealogy support contract to My Heritage Library Edition. I am starting to learn how to narrow down the results and find it (now) a rich site with images of all census records (something that FamilySearch.org doesn't have).

I noticed that one of the search sites offered in Reunion is My Heritage so I tried it out. I discovered that the search no longer works--I end up with a Bing search instead. Undaunted (for the moment), I set about creating a corrected Web Search .plist file following the instructions listed here:

http://www.leisterpro.com/download/CreatingWebSearchesForReunion10.pdf

I have it almost working. The only problem I have is that the URL (as displayed by my browser) uses %2F3 for the space delimiter. %2F is the hex code for /. If I try to put %2F3 in for the space delimiter, the actual URL created is %252F3 (%25 is hex code for %). If I try to put /3 I get exactly that. I have tried every variation I can think of with shouldEscape set to both true and false but have been unable to create the desired space delimiter.

Once I have that fixed I will have two .plist files (one for My Heritage and one for My Heritage Library Edition) ready to share. But they could be better if Reunion made more data available. Since the instructions created by Keith Bage (who I communicated with--he is no longer doing genealogy work and thus not working on search site .plists at this point) are three years old it is possible that the keys have increased from those he lists. I have already placed a number of these keys in my .plist in hopes that they some day will appear (until they do, Reunion is ignoring the lines that start with an invalid key). Here are keys that I would like to add to my search:

* Date formatting for day of month (I am using [BDATE-DD]) and month (I am using [BDATE-MM])
* Marriage place (I am using [MPL])
* Death place (I am using [DPL])
* Parents names (I won't add these until the keys are available)

Any help on how to fix my %2F3 problem is greatly appreciated! And hopefully Leister Pro. coders will look kindly on my request to have more keys available for searches.

I'm looking forward to getting this done with your help!

Sincerely,

Richard Webb

[Mark]

Re: Web Search sites: My Heritage and My Heritage Library Edition

Richard,

Would you be willing to e-mail us the plist file you created? If I can do some testing with it I should be able to determine how you can get the results you want. However, this may be a case where I'll need to change some code in the URL generator to correct the issue.

If you send the plist please also include an example URL generated by the website.

I discovered that the search no longer works--I end up with a Bing search instead.

It looks like My Heritage changed their search tool to use Bing, which is why you're getting a Bing search when you use the included My Heritage web search.

[riwebb]

Re: Web Search sites: My Heritage and My Heritage Library Edition

I sent it to the only e-mail address I could find (the help address) on Friday. I think you will find that fixing this also allows you to fix problems with FamilySearch.org. Currently the search link works, but not perfectly. With the current behavior, you get no returns if you try to click "Connections." If you resubmit the search it changes the URL getting rid of a lot of %25's in it and then you can see the "Connections."

[Mark]

Re: Web Search sites: My Heritage and My Heritage Library Edition

Thanks for sending the file -- we did receive it, though I may not get a chance to look into this until later this week.

[riwebb]

Re: Web Search sites: My Heritage and My Heritage Library Edition

I have another related question. I have started to modify some of my search .plists. For instance, I have modified the WorldConnect.plist to use a Metaphone search on the last name and to put the birth and death years in with a default of +/- 2 years on each. When/if you update search engine definitions, will these be overwritten? Is the best practice to always save the modified search engine with a different name?

[Mark]

Re: Web Search sites: My Heritage and My Heritage Library Edition

When/if you update search engine definitions, will these be overwritten? Is the best practice to always save the modified search engine with a different name?

The answer to both your questions is yes - when updates are downloaded, any of the search plists that are included with Reunion could be overwritten with an updated plist. In order to avoid losing your changes you should give your customized plists different filenames than the originals.