sourcing using Manitoba Vital Stats - how to use URL - is there a better way?

Question

Hi everyone!

Because I enjoy the Sourcerers Challenge and I live in Manitoba, I've been working on the Manitoba Unsourced Profiles list.  I've been using the Manitoba Vital Stats website https://vitalstats.gov.mb.ca/Query.php as one of the sources.

I just realized this evening that even after i find the record in the Manitoba Vital Stats database,  the URL doesn't  identify the record.  If i copy-and-paste it into the profile, it will just lead here: https://vitalstats.gov.mb.ca/ListView.php

For the one I'm currently working on, i tried pasting in the data from the Vital Stats database and including a note that if you want to see it yourself you will have to use the search engine.  Could someone have a look at what i did for the marriage of [[Fraser-4443|Donald Archibald Cook Fraser]] and tell me if that is reasonable or if there is a better way?

Best regards

Shirlea

Comments

that is so frustrating!  ohh why can it not work to where you can zero in on the facts you need?  Stupid technology - I know I have been guilty of putting in sources like this as well - some of the HBC archives work like this and it is maddening - so what I started doing was putting the link but also copy and paste the part I want to show that source for the particular profile - I hope this is not some copyright issue

---

me too!! I think the copy-and-paste solution with source attribution sounds good for now!

Answer 1

Good question Shirlea!  I've had the same issue with my Manitoba in-laws. There doesn't seem to be a url for an individual record in this database, and that may be part of the reason they never seem to get indexed on sources like Familysearch.  Like you I've defaulted to entering as much info in the WikiTree profile as I can.  I'm watching your Q to see if anyone else has a better solution.

Answer 2

Argh. That site runs on php, which I don't speak. There is parameter passing going on there, but the php is hiding it. It may be that some variation on https://vitalstats.gov.mb.ca/DetailView.php?reg_no=%221939,032390%22 would get you to the page you want, but I haven't been able to find the right syntax to do it. (Or maybe it's just not possible to pass parameters to that site in the URL. I don't know.)

Comments

Greg, parameter passing in links is not language dependent.  All server side languages (such as php, asp, and several others) are capable of compiling HTML code that is compliant with the W3C Consortium standards.  It is these standards for HTML that specify the attribute set for all tags and parameters can be passed as attributes of the <a> tag, which causes the link to an external or internal URL.

Apparently the parameters that cause the specific data set pulled from their database for display on a page are passed as hidden form variables, rather than as part of the URL.  The parameters are generated only from a page hosted on that server so there is no way for you to pass any variables from an external location to that website.