e-GEDSH App

Electronic edition of the Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage (e-GEDSH) by Beth Mardutho.

All publications are made available online in a free and open format using Creative Commons licenses.

Features

• Static HTML site with client-side search
• Search by keyword, person name, place name, contributor, bibliography, and URI
• Pagination support (20 results per page)
• CloudFront CDN distribution
• GitHub Actions CI/CD deployment

Project Structure

e-gedsh-app/
├── index.html              # Homepage
├── search.html             # Search interface
├── resources/
│   ├── css/               # Stylesheets
│   ├── js/
│   │   ├── search.js      # Search functionality
│   │   └── footer.js      # Footer component
│   └── img/               # Images
├── json/
│   ├── combined.json      # Aggregated search data
│   └── *.json            # Individual entry files
├── siteGenerator/
│   ├── build-json.sh      # Local TEI → JSON build script
│   ├── xsl/json.xsl       # TEI → JSON transform (XSLT)
│   └── components/
│       └── repo-config.xml # Search field configuration
└── infrastructure/
    ├── cloudformation.yml # AWS infrastructure
    └── README.md          # Deployment guide

Local Development

Static Site (Recommended)

The simplest way to run e-GEDSH locally is as a static site:

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/srophe/e-gedsh-app.git
   cd e-gedsh-app

2. Start a local web server:

   Using Python:

   python3 -m http.server 8000

   Using Node.js:

   npx serve -l 8000

3. Navigate to http://localhost:8000

Search works out of the box using the bundled json/combined.json file — no backend required.

eXist-db (Legacy)

The app can also run on eXist-db for full XQuery functionality (SPARQL proxy, content negotiation, OAI-PMH):

1. Install eXist-db (version 5.x or later)

2. Build the XAR package:

   ant xar

   This creates build/e-gedsh-<version>.xar

3. Deploy via eXist-db Package Manager:

   • Open the eXist-db Dashboard at http://localhost:8080/exist/apps/dashboard
   • Go to Package Manager → Upload and select the .xar file
   • Also install the e-gedsh-data package from the e-gedsh repository

4. Access the app at http://localhost:8080/exist/apps/e-gedsh

Docker (eXist-db)

To run the eXist-db version in a container:

1. Build the XAR package first:

   ant xar
   mkdir -p autodeploy
   cp build/*.xar autodeploy/

2. Build and run the Docker image:

   docker build --build-arg ADMIN_PASSWORD=<password> -t e-gedsh .
   docker run -d -p 8080:8080 --name e-gedsh e-gedsh

3. Access the app at http://localhost:8080/exist/apps/e-gedsh

Search Data

Search data is sourced from the e-gedsh repository (TEI XML) and transformed into per-entry JSON files plus an aggregated json/combined.json that the search UI loads client-side.

JSON Structure

{
  "fullText": "...",
  "title": "...",
  "contributor": "Lucas Van Rompay",
  "idno": "https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/...",
  "displayTitleEnglish": "...",
  "infobox": "(ca. 400)",
  "persName": ["..."],
  "placeName": ["..."]
}

• contributor — the article author (from the TEI byline/author), shown in search results.
• infobox — the entry's date/qualifier string (from <ab type="infobox">, e.g. (ca. 400)), shown next to the title.

Generating the JSON Locally

The JSON is produced from the TEI XML by an XSLT stylesheet (siteGenerator/xsl/json.xsl) run through Saxon. The same transform runs in CI (.github/workflows/dataToAWS.yml); the steps below reproduce it on your machine.

Requirements

• Java 11+ (java -version to check)
• The TEI source data checked out alongside this repo. The build script defaults to ../e-gedsh/data/tei/articles/tei:

  # from the parent directory of e-gedsh-app
  git clone https://github.com/srophe/e-gedsh.git

• Saxon-HE 10.6 — the build script downloads it automatically to /tmp/saxon.jar if it isn't present.

Build script (recommended)

# from the e-gedsh-app root
siteGenerator/build-json.sh

This converts every TEI article to json/<id>.json, skips non-article files (front/back matter), and rebuilds json/combined.json. To point at a TEI directory somewhere else, pass it as the first argument:

siteGenerator/build-json.sh /path/to/e-gedsh/data/tei/articles/tei

Set SAXON_JAR to reuse an existing Saxon jar instead of downloading one:

SAXON_JAR=/path/to/saxon.jar siteGenerator/build-json.sh

Manual invocation (single file)

To transform one entry and print it to stdout:

java -jar /tmp/saxon.jar \
  -s:/path/to/e-gedsh/data/tei/articles/tei/Aba.xml \
  -xsl:siteGenerator/xsl/json.xsl

The stylesheet locates its field configuration (siteGenerator/components/repo-config.xml) relative to itself, so no extra parameters are required regardless of the working directory. To read the config from a different app root instead, pass staticSitePath=<app-root>.

After regenerating, restart your local web server (or hard-refresh) so the browser picks up the new json/combined.json.

Deployment

AWS

See infrastructure/README.md for AWS deployment instructions.

GitHub Pages

The static site can be hosted for free on GitHub Pages.

1. Go to your repo Settings → Pages
2. Under Source, select GitHub Actions
3. Add .github/workflows/pages.yml:

   name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
   
   on:
     push:
       branches: [main]
   
   permissions:
     contents: read
     pages: write
     id-token: write
   
   jobs:
     deploy:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       environment:
         name: github-pages
         url: ${{ steps.deployment.outputs.page_url }}
       steps:
         - uses: actions/checkout@v4
         - uses: actions/configure-pages@v4
         - uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3
           with:
             path: .
         - id: deployment
           uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4

4. Push to main — the site will be live at https://<org>.github.io/e-gedsh-app/

Path fix: GitHub Pages serves from a subdirectory (/e-gedsh-app/), so root-relative paths need updating. Convert /resources/... to ./resources/...:

find . -name "*.html" -exec sed -i '' 's|href="/resources|href="./resources|g; s|src="/resources|src="./resources|g' {} +

Alternatively, if you use a custom domain (e.g., gedsh.bethmardutho.org), root paths work without changes — just add a CNAME file containing your domain to the repo root.

Search works automatically since it loads json/combined.json client-side.

License

Content licensed under Creative Commons. See footer for details.