My Fishbase Client Program

[nmonks]

If you're anything like me, you use FishBase a lot. For anyone into oddball fish, it's a prime resource for tracking down information on habitat and such. Anyway, I've been finding using their own search page a bit of a hassle. It's slow, for one thing. So I quickly knocked together a quick client program in REALBasic that lets me quickly get to the information I need.

It's called FishBase Client 1.0 and you can download it from here if you want to try it out yourself. It does a bunch of different searches, such as by common name (e.g., "freshwater moray") as well as allowing you to go straight to a species or bring up lists of species within genera. Also has a tool for doing family-level searchers (e.g., "Cichlidae").

http/homepage.mac.com/nmonks/software/software.html

It's free, and is in Mac and Windows versions. I haven't tested the Windows version yet, so I have no idea if it works properly.

Cheers,

Neale

 

[Fella]

This is actually brilliant!

Have you contacted fishbase to let them know this exists?

 

[nmonks]

Thanks!

No, not written to them. Should I? I don't think I'm infringing on anything, since all it does is launch a web page quickly, it isn't actually using the data.

Once I figured out the search strings, it seemed kind of obvious to put them in one place as bookmarks or something. One thing led to another, and I ended up with a program that launched search strings on whatever I wanted. REALBasic is really very cool.

Cheers,

Neale

This is actually brilliant!

Have you contacted fishbase to let them know this exists?

 

[AMS]

Thank god! Now there is a way to access fishbase without waiting 45 minutes for a page to load! Thanks Neale!

 

[nmonks]

If you're using the Win XP version, by any chance, can you let me know, either here or through a PM. I can't be bothered to find my old PowerBook and launch Virtual PC just to test this one program... just too lazy. And Virtual PC won't work on my Intel Mac!

Cheers,

Neale

 

[AMS]

I am using windows XP.

 

[andywg]

My only problem with fishbase is the odd entry that is different to almost all other knowledge.

A prime example is the New Guinea (or dwarf) frogfish Antennarius dorehensis which fishbase has as getting to 14cm whereas all other literature suggests 2.5 to 5cm.

The program seems to work nicely though. Good work.

 

[Fella]

I'm using windows XP too and it works fine.

The reason I say to let them know, is I imagine it must be of some value to them. Could it cut down on the traffic and thus increase their bandwidth? Any website owner would be interested in that. As you're not acce3ssing the search page itself, I'm guessing you're cutting down on some for them.


Great program though!

 

[nmonks]

Fella --

I have e-mailed FishBase. Let's see what they say. I'm pretty sure they can't object.

Anyway, I've uploaded version 1.1. The new feature is two options instead of one on the Family search. Now you can get the biology summary as well as the species list. It's funny, the search scripts FishBase use aren't documented anywhere, but I imagine I'm going to keep finding new ones and add them to the application!

http/homepage.mac.com/nmonks/files/FishBaseClient_Mac.sitx [Mac]
http/homepage.mac.com/nmonks/files/FishBaseClient_Win.zip [Windows]

It does seem a lot faster using this app that using FishBase's own search page. Odd.

andywg --

I agree with you about FishBase's data odditities. I'm not sure how much is actually their fault. As others have pointed out, FishBase is a compilation of science papers and monographs. The people doing it aren't experts on the fish themselves. Hence, they're 100% dependent on the quality of the data published in the literature.

For me, the classic example is Colomesus asellus, the South American puffer. Every book says that the maximum size is around 14 cm based on the original description, I think, and yet no collector has ever seen one even half that size. No aquarist has, either. So either the original description was based on a freakishly large specimen or that description was erroneous when it was written (e.g., based on a different species).

Cheers,

Neale

 

[beblondie]

I use windows XP pro and the program works great -Anne

 

[GaryHug24]

I tired it on Windows 2000 and it worked fine.