PhpBibliography - web based bibliography system

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by Lorenzo Bettini

PhpBibliography allows you to publish your bibliography online (and to edit it via web).
It is implemented in Php 5 and uses MySql 5 (however, it might work also with Php 4, and also with MySql 4, but I'm not testing this).

This is a complete rewriting using CakePhp, the old version site is available here.

It can also generate RSS feeds and import papers from DBLP, thanks to Ezio Bartocci.

This is free software, open source, released under GPL.

Download

You can download PhpBibliography from here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpbibliography

You need a web server with php support and a MySql server. In particular, phpbibliography was developed under Linux, using Apache 2 web server (I guess it should work also on other systems).

You can also find details about new features on my blog, in this area: http://tronprog.blogspot.com/search/label/phpbibliography.

Installation

These instructions assume you already have a working web server/php/MySql system.

If you have an already installed version of PhpBibliography (earlier than version 1.x) you will need to follow the instructions you find at this link.

As an example, we will assume to install phpbibliography in the directory phpbibliography and to access it through localhost.

1. Create a database called phpbibliography (this is the default but you can choose the name you want; for instance some providers already set up some databases for you, with predefined names) and assign user and password to the created database (or use the ones set by your provider).
2. Unzip the contents of the archive in a directory of your web server.
3. PhpBibliography assumes that your apache web server has the mod_rewrite module installed and working; PhpBibliography relies on CakePhp, thus you can find further installation advanced instructions (especially concerning mod_rewrite) in the official CakePhp documentation, in particular, see the section about mod_rewrite.
   
4. Make sure that the directories app/config, app/webroot/files and app/tmp are writable by the web server user (you can also make them writable by anyone, e.g., with chmod 777). After the installation successfully finished, you can also make app/config directory not writable anymore.
5. Now visit the subdirectory installs with a browser of the site where you installed phpbibliography (e.g., in our example http://localhost/phpbibliography/installs); if everything was set up correctly you should see something like the following screenshot
   
   
   
   
   
6. Now provide the information concerning your database you created and press submit (the table prefix is useful if your provider gives only one database that you need to share with other web software)
7. Check that everything works; you can now go back to the database configuration, or proceed with the installation.
8. The next step will create the database tables and you can simply press the Create button.
9. Then you can finalize the installation (press Finalize button).
10. You should get the message that PhpBibliography is now correctly installed (note that visiting the installs path again will not be allowed) and that you can now login.
11. Phpbibliography comes with a predefined admin user, password admin. Use it to login the first time and then go in the users section and change the password.

While logged as a user you can add/edit/remove papers and other information concerning the papers.

The public phpbibliography interface is accessible now through the path where you installed phpbibliography (in our example, http://localhost/phpbibliography).

If you need to login again you can do that using the login path (in our example, http://localhost/phpbibliography/login).

Upgrade

If you upgrade to a new version of Phpbibliography (later than 1.0.x anyway), after you unzipped the contents of the new version in the directory where you previously installed Phpbibliography, you should visit the subdirectory installs with a browser of the site where you installed phpbibliography (e.g., in our example http://localhost/phpbibliography/installs); this is similar to when you installed the first version of Phpbibliography, but this time the system will detect that you're upgrading. In particular, you'll be asked to login.

If you experience an error, or simply you are not directed to any page (or a blank page), please make sure to clean all the cache directories: app/tmp/models and app/tmp/persistent, and then try again to visit the installs directory with the browser.


Then follow the instructions on the screen. (please, remember to do a backup of the mysql database, in any case).

An upgrade may have to modify the structure of your database tables, so please, remember to do a backup of the mysql database.

At the end of the upgrade, follow the instructions until you get to the message saying that Phpbibliography is correctly upgraded.

Adding and modifying users and papers

Online help is available when editing/adding papers; please refer to that help for further details.

You can create further users if you want; if you set the "admin" check box when creating/editing a user, that user will have administration privileges (e.g., he'll be able to change other users besides himself).

Next you can start adding your authors, attributes for the papers, and then the papers themselves. This can be done by accessing the admin menu.

When inserting a paper you can also upload two files for your paper (they will be uploaded in the files subdirectory, see above); you can also insert a direct link (URL) to the paper if the paper is already available on-line somewhere else.

Features

These are the main features provided by PhpBibliography:

• Automatic generation of bibtex for papers (unless a manual bib item is specified when editing the paper).
• For each paper two files can be uploaded and two links can be specified.
• Papers can be searched with criteria about their fields.
• Besides standard fields, new attributes can be specified for papers; attributes can be selectable, i.e., the logged user can choose among a(n extensible) set of values and multiple, i.e., a paper can be given several values for that attribute; an example of selectable/single attribute is "Publisher", an example of selectable/multiple attribute is "Keyword", and an example of non-selectable attribute is "DOI".
  
• Papers can be specified as private (visible only to logged users).
• Reports can be generated by filtering by author, by value and by grouping up to two levels (e.g., show only papers of a given authors, grouped by year and by paper type).
• RSS feeds are available for search results, reports and paper lists.
• Lists of papers, and results of reports and searches can be included in other webpages (by using the bare layout).
• Papers can be imported from DBLP.
• Searches for possible duplicate papers.
• Papers can be inserted through bibtex items and bibtex files.
• Theme support.
• Internationalization (since version 1.1.1): supported languagues: English, Italian, French (please contact the author or use the tracking system for submitting a new translation).
  

Documentation

Initial documentation can be found in this page, in particular Installation, Upgrading and basic editing. Moreover, PhpBibliography comes with a help html file that can be accessed while editing the contents of the site (for specific elements in modification/insertion forms you will see a (?) image that will link you directly to the corresponding part in the html help file).
Moreover, other specific documentation articles can be found at the PhpBibliography Wiki Page.

Other Links

• Install PhpBibliography in Ubuntu.