Databases (GNU Dico Manual)

4.3.12 Databases

Dictionary databases are defined using the database block statement.

Configuration: database { statements } ¶: Defines a dictionary database. At least two sub-statements must be defined for each database: name and handler.

Database: visible bool ¶: Defines whether this database is visible or not. By default, all databases are visible. You will need this statement if you want to temporary hide the database without removing it from the configuration. Another common use case is to hide a database that is used as a member of a virtual database, so that its contents is available only by querying the parent database (see Virtual Databases).

Database: name string ¶: Sets the name of this database (a single word). This name will be used to identify this database in DICT commands.

Database: handler string ¶: Specifies the handler name for this database and any arguments for it. This handler must be previously defined using the load-module statement (see Database Modules and Handlers).

For example, the following fragment defines a database named ‘en-de’, which is handled by ‘dictord’ handler. The handler is passed one argument, database=en-de:

database {
        name "en-de";
        handler "dictorg database=en-de";
}

More directives are available to fine-tune the database.

Database: description string ¶

Supplies a short description, to be shown in reply to SHOW DB command. The string may not contain new-lines.

Use this statement if the database itself does not supply a description, or if its description is malformed.

In any case, if the description directive is specified, its value takes precedence over the description string retrieved from the database itself.

See SHOW DB, for a description of SHOW DB command.

Database: info string ¶

Supplies a full description of the database. This description is shown in reply to SHOW INFO (see SHOW INFO) command. The string is usually a multi-line text, so it is common to use here-document syntax (see here-document), e.g.:

info <<- EOT
   This is a foo-bar dictionary.
   Copyright (C) 2008 foo-bar dict group.
   Distributed under the terms of GNU Free
   Documentation license.
EOT;

Use this statement if the database itself does not supply a full description, or if its full description is malformed.

As with description, the value of info takes precedence over info strings retrieved from the database.

The following two directives control the content type and transfer encoding used when formatting replies from this database if OPTION MIME (see OPTION MIME) is in effect:

Database: mime-headers multiline-string ¶

Defines the headers to be sent with the replies from this database. Argument is a here-document (see here-document), containing the headers to be sent with each dictionary entry, if the client sent the ‘OPTION MIME’ command. By default dicod uses MIME headers defined in the database itself. Use this statement if these are not defined, or if you want to override them. In this case you would want to include at least the ‘Content-Type’ and ‘Content-Transfer-Encoding’ headers, as shown in the example below:

directory {
   name "foo";
   handler "dictorg";
   mime-headers <<- EOT
     Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
     Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
   EOT;     
   ...
}

Valid values for the ‘Content-Transfer-Encoding’ header are:

8bit: The content will be transferred as is.
quoted-printable: Non-printable characters will be encoded using the ‘quoted-printable’ encoding.
base64: Non-printable characters will be encoded using the ‘base64’ encoding.