Move FAG URL to Footnotes

#1 · 2025-08-02, 1:41 am

My "editor" wants the URL from FindaGrave in the footnote. I always paste the URL from each person's memorial into the citation in the webtag field or Ancestry inserts it automatically if I find the record there and then use Treeshare. Is there a way to move the URL from the citation into the footnote for all FAG source citations .... or for any specific source citation, should the need arise?

Muchas gracias amigos!

#2 · 2025-08-02, 8:38 am

This is an example from Evidence Explained:

Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/12345678/john-smith : accessed 11 July 2024), memorial page for John Smith (1850-1920), created by "Jane Doe" (Find a Grave ID 12345), citing Smith Cemetery, Anytown, USA.

I think this is a verbose, cluttered, and excessive footnote. For repeated citations, this is exampled:

Find a Grave, John Smith, memorial 158906725.

That might be rather abrupt for a first footnote, yet is sufficient to plug into a web search engine to readily find the website page URL. Adding the root URL is not even necessary.

So I would challenge your "editor", why?

The direct answer to your question is "maybe". Easiest if all the citations are Free Form. It would have to detect whether the webtag URL is already in the footnote. If the Find a grave citations are on a templated source, it's more difficult because the procedure has to work with and through XML tags.

#3 · 2025-08-10, 9:38 pm

Quote from Jaime Teas on 2025-08-10, 9:38 pm
Sorry to be so long in replying Tom.
So the answer to "why" is that she is manually adding the FAG memorial # to every FAG citation footnote because she wants it that way for the book we will be publishing. That seems a daunting task for SQL, but I thought that if the link could be moved (or copied) from the Citation Details/Citation WebTag into the source template, she could either edit it (which would be faster than having to look each one up and type it) or just leave it as is.
As an aside, I like the concise example you show from Evidence Explained, and that happens to be the book my cousin is using. Maybe I should buy a copy of the 3rd edition on eBay (much cheaper than the newest 4th edition) as I think I might have another book to do on my own before I die.
From what you said before, it appears possible to put a Citation Details Web Tag into a footnote in a FreeForm footnote? If so, could you please let me know what the source template would be? I can't find the "codes" for all of the different fields anywhere.
A few years ago, you wrote a new Ancestry source template and SQL script for me to solve the issue I had that my bibliography was not in true alphabetical order because every Ancestry citation began with Ancestry.com. See SourceTemplate-AncestryRecord-cleaned.sql. Thankfully, that script still works for RM10!
You also wrote a script for me https://sqlitetoolsforrootsmagic.com/forum/topic/delete-all-facts-containing-specific-text-and-change-fact-type-if-it-has-a-specific-source/
So with those scripts in mind, I thought of 3 scenarios that might be possible:
Create a new source template called something like FindaGrave. Then an SQL script might be able to identify all existing Ancestry source citations that have FindAGrave in the name or a FAG link in the Citation Details and convert those to the new source template.
Another approach would be to edit the Ancestry (cleaned) source template to include the web links. Then every Ancestry source citation would include a weblink (including the FAG citations), if one existed - which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, except that some are very lengthy and ugly.
A third idea is to create a new FAG source and somehow get SQL to merge any Ancestry sources that have FindaGrave in the name or a FAG link in the Citation Details into the new template.
As you know, I don't know how to write SQL, but learned enough in my job in customer support for a national tech company in the 1980's to understand the logic of programming ... sorta! ... and that was DOS, which seems to have nothing in common with SQL that I can see.
Thanks for reading this. Please let me know if I am unclear or confusing or if any of these scenarios are possible, or if you come up with more.
Jaime
P.S. I have been up all night playing around to see if I could modify existing scripts to get what I want. I created a new source, source template and a script, all incomplete, but I think they might have potential. Is there a way I can send it just to you without posting publicly here? I don't want anyone to think it is a real script and I don't want to embarrass myself either ha ha!

Sorry to be so long in replying Tom.

So the answer to "why" is that she is manually adding the FAG memorial # to every FAG citation footnote because she wants it that way for the book we will be publishing. That seems a daunting task for SQL, but I thought that if the link could be moved (or copied) from the Citation Details/Citation WebTag into the source template, she could either edit it (which would be faster than having to look each one up and type it) or just leave it as is.

As an aside, I like the concise example you show from Evidence Explained, and that happens to be the book my cousin is using. Maybe I should buy a copy of the 3rd edition on eBay (much cheaper than the newest 4th edition) as I think I might have another book to do on my own before I die.

From what you said before, it appears possible to put a Citation Details Web Tag into a footnote in a FreeForm footnote? If so, could you please let me know what the source template would be? I can't find the "codes" for all of the different fields anywhere.

A few years ago, you wrote a new Ancestry source template and SQL script for me to solve the issue I had that my bibliography was not in true alphabetical order because every Ancestry citation began with Ancestry.com. See SourceTemplate-AncestryRecord-cleaned.sql. Thankfully, that script still works for RM10!

You also wrote a script for me https://sqlitetoolsforrootsmagic.com/forum/topic/delete-all-facts-containing-specific-text-and-change-fact-type-if-it-has-a-specific-source/

So with those scripts in mind, I thought of 3 scenarios that might be possible:

Create a new source template called something like FindaGrave. Then an SQL script might be able to identify all existing Ancestry source citations that have FindAGrave in the name or a FAG link in the Citation Details and convert those to the new source template.
Another approach would be to edit the Ancestry (cleaned) source template to include the web links. Then every Ancestry source citation would include a weblink (including the FAG citations), if one existed - which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, except that some are very lengthy and ugly.
A third idea is to create a new FAG source and somehow get SQL to merge any Ancestry sources that have FindaGrave in the name or a FAG link in the Citation Details into the new template.

As you know, I don't know how to write SQL, but learned enough in my job in customer support for a national tech company in the 1980's to understand the logic of programming ... sorta! ... and that was DOS, which seems to have nothing in common with SQL that I can see.

Thanks for reading this. Please let me know if I am unclear or confusing or if any of these scenarios are possible, or if you come up with more.

Jaime

P.S. I have been up all night playing around to see if I could modify existing scripts to get what I want. I created a new source, source template and a script, all incomplete, but I think they might have potential. Is there a way I can send it just to you without posting publicly here? I don't want anyone to think it is a real script and I don't want to embarrass myself either ha ha!