I would like to create a simple database where I can read a sutta, enter that sutta’s ID, and attach my own keywords/tags to that sutta. Most importantly, I’d like it to also have a “lookup” feature that has two functions:
When clicking on a sutta id (e.g., MN 1) from a master list of all suttas, it will show all of the keywords I’ve entered for that individual sutta.
When clicking on a keyword (e.g., “sekha”) from a master list of all keywords I’ve entered, it will show all of the suttas linked to that keyword.
I’m not a coder; just have a basic proficiency with common programs like MS Office and its Google versions. A friend of mine helped me build something in Google Sheets, but it’s pretty complicated and requires him to update it periodically so that the newly-entered suttas and tags show up in the lookup feature. It seems that there must be a simpler way – ideally one that I can maintain by myself.
The first link is just to SuttaCentral MN1.
The second link is just a link to Voice for finding the suttas that have a given phrase.
You could do this in Google Sheets. For this post I used Markdown. And I have made this post a wiki so anybody can edit it and you can see how I used Markdown.
(Anagarika @Sabbamitta, I’ve often wondered how we might support study notes in Voice)
This sounds like a good use case for a personal wiki. There are many applications, across all of the common platforms; it may take some trial-and-error to find one with the features that suit your needs.
Specifically, I put the suttacentral epubs on the Google Play Books app. I turn on note exporting to Google Docs and then highlight the sutta title and add my tags there (in addition to highlighting and annotating passages that speak to me).
These notes (along with all my other notes on everything else) are then easily searchable on Docs.
Actually this is a really cool idea. If someone is feeling industrious, they could start a thematic index wiki here on SCDD, perhaps using AtI’s Index as a starting point.
I’m currently using Memento Database app for my personal projects. The app basically let you build your own app based database which you can modify the field and add entries by yourself. It supports Javascript but i don’t know how to do it. It also supports sync with Google Sheets, so i can import and edit it there.
My Idea is to make it into a table that consist of sutta’s number, title, verse and tags, and then I will import it.
Is there a fastest way to fill the data in Gsheets?
Sheets can import with csv or Json with a plugin, so download the data from git or http and reformat the values you want programatically. This may not be very fast to set up, but it won’t process for too long.
So you want the entire sutta’s text in the spreadsheet? That is a lot to put into a spreadsheet, having one cell with a link like suttacentral.net/{reference} is possible. Unless the tags are like comments for each line?
The import data from the sutta can be by line, but that is a lot to be shoved through sheets and then into the app, so you’d probably want to import straight to the app in that case.
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