make accession ID format institution-dependent

[mfrasca]

From @mfrasca on April 29, 2015 21:5

different gardens use different ID formats for accessions.
in Mompox we just adopted the Bauble standard (year+4.digit) and it served us good,
but here at the JBQ in Quito they already have a 6.digit code for accessions.
at the BTUU in Utrecht they use still an other (much longer) format.

it would be practical if one could specify the accession code format in the institution definition.
the input should then be validated against the format. (maybe an other issue?)

Copied from original issue: mfrasca#84

[mfrasca]

@tmyersdn, in #58 writes:

Is it possible in the type of material to add some extra enumerations: "voucher" and "seed for storage". If either of these types is selected, then the suggested accession number gets replaced by another suggestion: (either SD.#### or H.####). In both cases, SD and H, the software would run an independent counter for SD and for H. These would not need a year.

[mfrasca]

also compare with Ghini/ghini.desktop#9. the current list is not from ITF2, the field has an ITF2 description.

I think you are not focusing on the type of material part, I have the impression your focus is on the use you make of the material.
following itf2 for type of material, I would offer you the options:

• P Whole plant
• S Seed or Spore
• V Vegetative part
• T Tissue culture
• O Other

whereas you want the software to help you distinguish between P for a living plant and P for a vouchered plant. possibly also between S for a seed you already germinated and a S for a seed you are keeping in your seed bank/storage.

you might just as well misuse the 'intended location' field! 😈

---

my thought would be to offer you now not just one accession id format, but several, and for the time being not to make it functionally dependent on any other fields in the accession.
(I'm afraid we otherwise spend the year discussing. who knows, practice might show the way.)

• from a list you would select which format applies to your accession,
• in the list, each format would have a brief description of its intended usage,
• if the format contains the string %Y, (cfr. man date), this is substituted with the four digits of the current year.
• the software would fill in the #### part with the value following the highest value in the database.
• these formats would be stored as database preferences, just like we do for stored queries.
• on database initialization it would be just one: %Y.#### (@felipead87 would change it to ######, @tmyersdn would keep it and add SD.#### and H.####.)
• we need a user interface to edit them,
• we need the accession editor to offer a id_format selector,
• the accession editor might offer a link to the id_format editor next to the id_format selector.

this could be applied to 1.0 as well as to 1.1

[mfrasca]

• the ### part must be the trailing part.
• %PD is substituted with the plant delimiter as set in the configuration.
• all that is described in man date is recognized and translated.

the code for interpreting this is quickly in place.

we still miss:

• a user interface to edit them,
• the accession editor to offer a id_format selector,

[RoDuth]

I have a situation here where we have decided that the first part of the current accession number system must represent the year that the accession (physical item) entered the gardens. So if we planted the plant in late December and I am only now getting time to enter them into the database I am having to change the 2016.xxxx to 2015.xxxx This means I then have to work out the next number in the sequence. A minor nuisance but it would be nice if bauble offered the next in the sequence as a kind of auto-fill option. Also, for all older plants that I am back accessioning, to denote that we don't know exactly when they were planted we give them four capital letter x, as in XXXX, as the first section of the accession number so the accession number looks literally like this XXXX.1098 so the same issue applies here. Every accession (and this is one of the big task I am on at the moment) I enter with the XXXX accession number I have to remember what the last number was.

Will what your suggesting provide a solution for this scenario?

[mfrasca]

yes, it definitely would. it does not offer you the option "previous year", but you can edit the formats so you keep %Y.#### for this year, XXXX.#### for the unknown year, and a moving one for the previous year. I would not want to do make things more complicated than necessary, with things like %{Y-1}.####. I'm just asking you to edit once a year the 'previous year' code format.

[mfrasca]

you can already try it out, you need install ghini-1.0 and checkout and install ghini-1.0-dev.
or wait that I publish 1.0.56.
but better checkout and install the -dev branch and tell me I can publish it.

[mfrasca]

I can support the format %{Y-1}.####, if it does not look ugly to you, that is.

[RoDuth]

Looks really good!