How To Make Relationships

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Revision as of 13:45, 3 February 2006 by Shepard (talk | contribs) (+CategoryHowTo (Imported from MoinMoin))
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Getting Started with Advanced Relationships

Let's say that I'd like to add the information that Grinspoon's album Easy was produced by Jonathan Burnside. Here are the steps:

Login

If you aren't already logged in, login to MusicBrainz (see LoggingIn).

Find the first element

Browse to the first thing you want to relate. It doesn't matter which one you choose first. In this case, I'm choosing the album, Easy.

Select the first element

To do this, click on the "Use this album in a relationship" link in the box just under the title box. That's the one circled in red in the following diagram:

use-in-rel-circled.png

Once you've done that, the relationship box will change to show you all the things you've selected. So far you've only got one, which isn't enough to make a relationship, so the box will tell you this:

easy-selected.png

Find the second element

Browse to the second thing you want to relate. You can take your time doing this - MusicBrainz won't "forget" about the element you've already selected[1]. You can even create a whole new database entry from scratch if you need to. In this case, I've created a new artist, Jonathan Burnside, because he hasn't been entered in the database yet.

Select the second element

Once you've found the second element, click on the "Use this artist in a relationship" link. Now the relationship box will show both the elements you've selected so far, and since there are two, the "Create relationship" link appears.

both-selected.png

The relationship creator page

Click on the "Create relationship" link. This will take you to a page where you have to choose which kind of relationship you want to use. This page will be different depending on whether you have JavaScript enabled in your browser. If you do, the page will look like this:

HowToMakeRelationships rel-creator-init-withjs.png

JavaScript allows the page to hide unnecessary detail depending on which values you choose. If you have JavaScript disabled, the page will look rather more complicated:

HowToMakeRelationships rel-creator-init-nojs.png

The rest of my screenshots are going to assume that JavaScript is enabled. However, the instructions are the same with or without JavaScript.

Choose the relationship type

Select the correct relationship type from the drop-down box at the top. In my case I choose "{additionally} produced", in the "production" category. The words in braces ("{" and "}") are optional attributes. When I select "produced" from the drop-down list, a new checkbox, "additional", will appear on the page.

rel-creator-produced.png

This allows me to include the relationship attribute AdditionalRelationshipAttribute in my relationship. I'm not going to, since Jonathan Burnside was the only producer on this album. There are also start and end date fields. These are useful for relationships such as band memberships (MemberOfBandRelationshipType) and marriages (MarriedRelationshipType), but in this case they're not useful.

So that relationship is ready to submit. I type a moderation note into the box saying where I got the information from, and then click on the "Submit" button.

Finished

The moderation has now been submitted, and other users can now vote on it. In the meantime, MusicBrainz generously assumes that the moderation is OK, and displays it on the album page for Easy:

HowToMakeRelationships finished.png

This will now be visible to all users, until the edit gets voted down or the relationship is deleted by another edit.

See Also

  1. IIRC the elements you selected are stored on the server-side and are related to your session-ID. therfore the server will remember your selection for the whole session. You can always clear the list by selecting [Cancel].