FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

If you can't find an answer here, please take a look at the Issues page.

Q: How do I upload a codebook into CED2AR?

First, you need to have access to the CED2AR application. You also need to have the privilege to upload codebook files.

Here is a video link Uploading a codebook into CED2AR (using an .xml file).

There are more video links in the User’s Guide.

For command-line or API-based uploads, another mechanism is provided via a RESTful interface. Here is an example of how to use this in cURL:

curl -v -L -i \
     --user "admin:admin" \
     -F "[email protected]" \
     -F "handle=acs2009" \
     -F "label=ACS_2009" \
     -F "file=@ACS_2009_Public_Use_File.xml" \
     -X POST http://localhost:8888/ced2ar-web/erest/codebooks/acs2009/v1

Q: Can I get a CED2AR codebook in PDF format?

Yes. Select the desired codebook in CED2AR. Click the page icon in the upper right side of the page. (The icon's hover text is: "Download as PDF".) In most browsers, the .pdf file will be in your Downloads folder.

Q: Can CED2AR convert a codebook, in PDF format, that could be uploaded into CED2AR? as a codebook?

No.

Q: How are the variables made available? Are they hand entered or automated somehow from the codebook?

Variables are automatically made available when they are uploaded into CED2AR. Assuming the XML codebook has variables, once the codebook is uploaded you can see those variables by clicking on the variables tab and then checking the codebook you want to filter for on the left side pane, or you can first go to the codebook (under the view codebooks tab), then click the ‘view variables’ button from there.

Q: Why are some elements displayed on edit pages and not on the public view pages?

There are two possibilities:

1. Earlier CED2AR development efforts thought that some elements may contain restricted data by some end user sites. (An example is the variable category level statistics for frequency and percentages.) In these cases the values were shown to authenticated users on the edit pages. The view/public pages did not show these elements.

2. The elements were missed by previous development efforts for the view/public pages.

In either case, an end user site can add the missing elements to the view and/or edit pages using the steps listed in the Developer Guide.

Q: Searching: My CED2AR searches are not finding all the hits I expect back for a search. (I know that a specific value is in the codebook's .xml file.)

There are several possibilities:

1. The most likely case is that the element that contains the value is not exposed by the page you are looking at. Search the corresponding .jsp and .xsl file for the element name you are looking for. If it is not found, chances are it is not exposed. Look at Exposing New Fields in the Interface. If it is listed, proceed to the next step.

2. The element value did not get loaded into CED2AR. Check to make sure the value is in the CED2AR codebook's .xml file. You can do this by using the CED2AR API. Here is an example using Postman to see the xml returned by the REST api. You can also use curl.

3. If it is none of the above, then it is possible that the CED2AR search functionality has a problem. Please report it on github.

You can also check github Issues page to see if anyone else had the same problem with the element you are searching for.

Q: Cannot upload codebooks.

See next question.

Q: I saw a cog under Codebooks. When I entered my login credentials, I got the following error. What do I do?

<userId>
Access denied.  You don't have permission to access this page.

If you have never logged into the system before, you may not be set up to edit codebooks.

To upload or edit codebooks (in CED2AR) you need to be Authenticated and Authorized.

1. You need to have a Google id OR an ORCID id to be authenticated into CED2AR. (Authentication is performed using OAuth 2.0.)

2. Authorization is performed by adding your Google id and/or ORCID id into the ced2ar-user-config.properties file.

3. Your site administrator needs to perform the following action. "authorized users must be manually added to WEB-INF/classes/ced2ar-user-config.properties." from The-CED2AR-Configuration-Files. If you only need to edit codebooks, your id needs to be added the to authorized.ROLE_USER line. If you need to do more than edit codebooks, such as change configuration parameters, your id needs to be added to the authorized.ROLE_ADMIN.users line.

4. The application (ced2ar-web) or application server (ex. tomcat) needs to be restarted for this change to take effect.