Include Preparation Attachments into the Web Portal

[pverley]

We are in the process of sharing our main collection from French Guiana Herbarium with the Web Portal (and looking forward to Specify-7 Export to Web Portal!).

In the main collection, CO are specimen with one or more Preps and dry sheet images are attached as Preparation Attachments. We do not have CO Attachments.

The Web Portal Documention - Using-the-Specify-Web-Portal.pdf page 7 - says that

Note: it is not necessary to include a collection object attachment field in Export Data Map, references (links) to collection object attachments are automatically included in the exported files if the attachment server is used for attachments.

As a result, our Preparation Attachments are not automatically included and detected as images to be displayed in the portal. We include them as a custom Images column (with a formatter on PrepAtt that recreates the full image URL)

https://collections.herbier-guyane.fr/

But it is not satisfactory.

My question is : how can I tweak either the query or the exported file so that Preparation Attachments are acknowledged as Images by the Web Portal

[Grant]

Hi @pverley,

Thanks for your question!

The Web Portal only looks for images in a Solr field called img. As you observed, when you export from Specify, this img field is automatically filled with data from Collection Object attachments, not from Preparation attachments.

Since your images are attached to preparations, they are not included in the img field during export, and the portal has no way to know they exist.

That means it isn’t possible without modifying the portal’s source code, updating Specify to add another export option, or manually constructing those img column values after exporting to show attachments from the preparation table instead.

Is this something you’d like us to write a feature request for? Would this be of interest for other tables?