Module:Find sources

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This module produces a list of links to search engines to help editors find sources about a given subject. It implements {{find sources}} and other similar templates. It is highly extensible; new templates and new link types can be added easily and by any user.

Usage

From wikitext

Usually, from wikitext this module should be used via a template, e.g. {{find sources}}. However, it is also possible to use it directly from #invoke, like this:

{{#invoke:Find sources|template|search term 1|search term 2|...}}

• template is the name of the template that should be called. It must be the full page name of the template, without the namespace, and with the correct capitalisation. So, for Template:Find sources, the template name should be "Find sources"; "find sources" with a lower-case "f" would cause an error. This parameter is required.
• search term 1, search term 2, etc., are the terms to be searched for in each of the search engine links. The first search term will appear in quotation marks, and subsequent search terms will be added without quotation marks. Each term will be separated by spaces. These parameters are all optional. If no parameters are given, the current page name will be used as a search term.

Alternatively the following can be used, which will convert any title to a search query, with the main portion of the title in quotation marks, and any parenthetical disambiguator outside quotation marks.

{{#invoke:Find sources|template|title=title}}

• template as above, is the name of the template that should be called. It must be the full page name of the template, without the namespace, and with the correct capitalisation. So, for Template:Find sources, the template name should be "Find sources"; "find sources" with a lower-case "f" would cause an error. This parameter is required.
• title the title to be converted to a search query. This is processed in the same way as the subpage name of the page if no parameters are used.

From Lua

Load the module with the following code:

local mFindSources = require('Module:Find sources')

You can then produce the list of search links like this:

mFindSources._main(template, searchTerms)

• template is the template name, as outlined in the #From wikitext section above. This parameter is required.
• searchTerms is an array of search terms. Each item in the array corresponds to a numbered search term as outlined in the #From wikitext section above. Alternatively, an empty table with the title key set will automatically generate a query as described above. This parameter is optional.

Example syntax:

mFindSources._main('Find sources', {'Albert Einstein', '-"Marilyn Monroe"', 'relativity', 'science'})

Available templates

The following templates are available for use:

Template	Description	Example	Configuration
Find general sources	The most widely used source-finding template. Until September 2014 it was transcluded on all AfD discussion pages.		main, documentation
Find sources mainspace	A source-finding template for use in mainspace. Used in Template:Notability.		main, documentation
Find sources medical	No description available		main, documentation
Find sources video games	The source-finding template transcluded on AfD pages for video games and related topics.		main, documentation

Making new templates

There are two basic ingredients to making a new source-finding template. The first is the template configuration module, and the second is the template invocation on the template page.

Template configuration page

To find the name of the template configuration page, take the page name of your proposed template without the namespace prefix, and add it to the base page of "Module:Find sources/templates/". For example, for Template:Find sources, the configuration page is located at Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources. Note that the template must be capitalised exactly as the page name is, otherwise the arguments will not be passed through from the template page to the module.

The template configuration page should look something like this:

return {
	blurb = "Find sources for $1 – $2",
	introLink = {code = 'google'},
	links = {
		{code = 'google news', display = 'news'},
		{code = 'google newspapers', display = 'newspapers', tooltip = 'Search newspapers with Google Books'}
	},
	separator = ', ',
	isUsedInMainspace = true,
	class = 'custom-class',
	style = 'color: green; font-size: 110%;'
}

• blurb - the text presented to users. There are two parameters available in the blurb, $1 and $2. $1 is the intro link, if specified, and $2 represents the other links. This field is required.
• introLink - an optional introductory link. If specified, this must be a link table. If the display value in the link table is not set, the search terms that the user entered will be used instead.
• links - an array of link tables defining the main links to be used by the template. This field is required.
• separator - the text separating the search engine links. This field is optional; the default value is taken from MediaWiki:Dot-separator.
• isUsedInMainspace - set this to true if the template will be used in the main namespace. If this is not set, when the template is used in the main namespace it will produce an error and be put in Category:Pages with templates in the wrong namespace.
• class - a custom HTML class to apply to the template text. The "plainlinks" class is added by default. This field is optional.
• style - custom CSS to apply to the template text. This field is optional.

Once you have created your template configuration page, you need to add the template to Module:Find sources/templates in order for it to show up in the table of templates on this documentation page.

Link tables

Link tables are used in the "introLink" and "links" fields of the template configuration. They can contain three fields, "code", "display", and "tooltip". The "code" field is required, and must be one of the link codes listed in the table below. The "display" field is optional, and specifies a custom display value for that link to be used by the template. If the display field is not set, a default value is set by the module. The "tooltip" field is also optional, and specifies a custom tooltip for the link. HTML reserved characters are escaped by the module. If the field is absent, no tooltip is displayed. For the "introLink" field, the default value is the search text entered by the user; for the "links" field, the default value is defined in the link configuration modules.

The following table contains all the available link codes, with descriptions and examples.

Code	Description	Example	Notes
ap	The Associated Press, an American news agency
archive.org	The Internet Archive, a digital library of public websites.
bbc	BBC, British public broadcaster
bing	Bing, Microsoft's flagship search engine.
britannica	Encyclopedia Britannica
british library	National library of the United Kingdom
ccsearch	CC Search: The official search engine of Creative Commons
cochrane	Cochrane Library: Leading publisher of systematic reviews.
doaj	DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals
duckduckgo	DuckDuckGo, a search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers' privacy and avoiding the "filter bubble" of personalized search results.
eowb	No description available
free news sources	No description available
gale	Gale Academic OneFile: Academic publisher portal from Gale. Access via Wikipedia Library
gin	No description available
globe and mail	The website of The Globe and Mail, a newspaper of record for Canada.
google	Google, the flagship search engine from Google Inc.
google books	Google Books, Google's search engine for books.
google free images	Google Images, Google's search engine for images. Only images compatible with Wikipedia's licensing are included.
google news	Google News, Google's search engine for news sites.		In the past this link searched news archives, but this functionality has been removed by Google. Currently, only recent news articles are searched.
google newspapers	Google Newspapers, a search of Google's digital archive of print newspapers.
google scholar	Google Scholar, Google's search engine for academic papers and other scholarly research.
haaretz	The website of Haaretz, a newspaper of record for Israel.
infoplease	No description available
internet archive scholar	The Internet Archive Scholar, a digital library of open access academic journals.
jstor	JSTOR, an online library containing digitised versions of academic journals. Requires a subscription.
library of congress	U.S. Library of Congress
mail and guardian	The website of the Mail & Guardian, a newspaper of record for South Africa.
medrs	MEDRS: Ideal sources for biomedical material include recent literature reviews and medical guidelines; learn how to identify reliable sources for medical content.
muse	No description available
new york times	The website of The New York Times, a newspaper of record for the United States.
new zealand herald	The website of The New Zealand Herald, a newspaper of record for New Zealand.
openlibrary	No description available
openmd	OpenMD: Search engine for medical literature.
pubmed	PubMed: Search engine for biomedical literature from NLM.
reuters	Reuters, an international news agency
sciencedirect	ScienceDirect: Elsevier's scientific, technical, and medical research portal.
south china morning post	The website of the South China Morning Post, a newspaper of record for Hong Kong.
springer	Springer Nature's portal for journals, books, and reference works.
statpearls	StatPearls: the largest provider of healthcare continuing education worldwide, providing peer-reviewed practice-guiding knowledge authored by clinical experts.
straits times	The website of The Straits Times, a newspaper of record for Singapore.
sydney morning herald	The website of The Sydney Morning Herald, a newspaper of record for Australia.
the age	The website of The Age, a newspaper of record for Australia.
the guardian	The Guardian newspaper, U.K.
the hindu	The website of The Hindu, a newspaper of record for India.
the times	The website of The Times, a newspaper of record for the United Kingdom.
times of india	The website of The Times of India, a newspaper of record for India.
trip	Trip Database: Search engine for clinical research evidence.
uptodate	No description available
vgrl	Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library internal archive search.
vgrs	Google RS, a custom Google search engine that limits the search to sites listed in Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Sources.
vgtalk	A search in the WikiProject Video games talk page and its archives under Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games.
wikipedia library	Search results from dozens of services provided via EBSCOhost to Wikipedians via Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library.
wikipedia reference search	Wikipedia Reference Search, a Google search that only searches sites vetted by Wikipedians.
wiley	Wiley Online Library: Wiley's portal for academic articles, books, and collections.
wsj	The website of The Wall Street Journal, a newspaper of record for the United States.

Template invocation

The template invocation on the template page itself should look like this:

{{#invoke:Find sources|template}}<noinclude>
{{#invoke:Find sources/autodoc|template}}
</noinclude>

This activates the template code and also provides automatic documentation. template is the name of the template without the namespace prefix, and must be correctly capitalised.

If you want to use custom documentation from a /doc subpage instead of the automatic documentation, use this invocation instead:

{{#invoke:Find sources|template}}<noinclude>
{{documentation}}
<!-- Categories go on the /doc subpage, and interwikis go on Wikidata. -->
</noinclude>

Adding new links

New links are added to Module:Find sources/links. Link codes should be short but descriptive, and should be in lower case. For example, the link code for Google search is "google".

The link configuration page should look something like this:

return {
	url = '//www.google.com/search?as_eq=wikipedia&q=$1',
	display = 'Google',
    description = '[[Google]], the flagship search engine from Google Inc.',
}

Parameters

Parameter	Description
url	The url to perform the search. This field takes a parameter $1, which is the URL-encoded search text entered by the user. This field is required.
display	If a display value is not specified in the template configuration, this value is used instead. This field is required.
separator	This is used to separate the search terms entered by the user. This is optional, and defaults to "+" (a URL-encoded space).
description	a brief description of what the search engine link does. This is used in the template documentation to generate the list of link descriptions, and also to make the descriptions in the table of link codes above. This is optional, but recommended.
notes	notes about the search engine link. These are put in the table of link codes above, but they are not put in the template documentation for individual source-finding templates. This field is optional.

Automatic documentation

Automatic documentation is provided for templates based on this module; the documentation is generated by Module:Find sources/autodoc. The autodoc module uses the following pages:

• Template:Find sources documentation - the template used for most of the documentation content.
• The template configuration page. Used to find the list of link codes, and to see if the template is used in articles.
• The template documentation configuration page. Used to find template shortcuts.
• The link documentation configuration page. Used to find descriptions of each of the search links.

Template documentation configuration page

This page is located at the "/autodoc" subpage of the template configuration page. It is only used to generate the documentation, not to generate any of the actual template output, so it does not need to be protected. It should look something like this:

return {
	shortcuts = {'shortcut1', 'shortcut2'},
	description = 'This template is used to provide source links on [[WP:AFD|AfD]] pages',
	docIntro = 'This template produces a series of search-engine links to be used on [[WP:AFD|AfD]] pages.'
}

• shortcuts - an array of shortcuts that redirect to the template page. These are displayed on the template documentation page using the {{template shortcut}} template.
• description - a brief description of what the template does. This is displayed on this documentation page in the table of available templates.
• docIntro - text to be used instead of the first sentence of the template documentation for individual source-finding templates. This is optional, and the default value is "This template produces a series of links to various search interfaces to help find additional reference material for articles."

Configuration

The messages used in this module can be found at Module:Find sources/config and Module:Find sources/autodoc/config. This can be helpful for translating this module for use in other languages. Note that any template and link configuration used must also be translated.

The above documentation is transcluded from Module:Find sources/doc. (edit | history)
Editors can experiment in this module's sandbox (edit | diff) and testcases (create) pages.
Subpages of this module.

-- This module implements {{find sources}} and other similar templates, and also
-- provides a mechanism to easily create new source-finding templates.
--
-- Template settings are found in subpages of [[Module:Find sources/templates]].
-- Link functions are defined in subpages of [[Module:Find sources/links]].
-- Functions shared between the link modules are stored at
-- [[Module:Find sources/shared]].

local ROOT_PAGE = 'Module:Find sources'
local TEMPLATE_ROOT = ROOT_PAGE .. '/templates/'
local LINK_ROOT = ROOT_PAGE .. '/links/'

local p = {}

local function maybeRequire(page)
	local success, module = pcall(require, page)
	if success then
		return module
	else
		return nil
	end
end

local function maybeLoadData(page)
	local success, data = pcall(mw.loadData, page)
	if success then
		return data
	else
		return nil
	end
end

function p.main(template, args)
	local templateCfg = maybeLoadData(TEMPLATE_ROOT .. template)
	if not templateCfg then
		error(string.format(
			"invalid template name '%s'; no template config found at [[%s]]'",
			template,
			TEMPLATE_ROOT .. template
		))
	end
end

setmetatable(p, { __index = function(t, template)
	return function(frame)
		local args = require('Module:Arguments').getArgs(frame, {
			wrappers = mw.site.namespaces[10].name .. ':' .. template
		})
		return t.main(template, args)
	end
end })

return p