Skip to content

Configure Hierarchical Search Facet

Jump to bottom
zguo edited this page May 21, 2021 · 7 revisions

Hierarchical structure is very common in metadata, from organizational structures to primary/secondary/tertiary subject categories, from geographic (e.g. World |US | California | Los Angeles...) to folder structure in data and metadata storage, it is possible to configure geoportal to use this hierarchical structure (for releases after 2.6.4), the hierarchical structure will help user to quickly narrow down to the desired records.

Configure hierarchical search

Lets say your metadata has primary/secondary/tertiary subject categories maintained in metadata element gmd:MD_TopicCategoryCode, the category are in the format of gmd:MD_TopicCategoryCodeCategory|Human|Economy|Recreation</gmd:MD_TopicCategoryCode>, and you want to add a hierarchical search facet for it so user can quickly search through multi level of categories.

Following are the steps to add a hierarchical search facet to geoportal:

  • Update EvaluatorFor_ISO.js

    • Open geoportal/src/main/resources/metadata/js/EvaluatorFor_ISO.js in an editor
    • Find section about hierarchical configuration "/* hierarchical category */", there are some description about additional configuration options there.
    • Uncomment "// G.evalProps(task,item,root,"src_category_cat","//gmd:MD_TopicCategoryCode");"
    • If you are configuring a different metadata element field, please update to the correct field name
    • The hierarchy field name need to end with "_cat"
    • If you are expecting values of this field to be edited by users later on, the field need to be prefix with "user_" rather than "src_"
    • Save the update

  • Harvest ISO metadata

    • Create input broker that contain the desired metadata
    • Harvest the metadata into geoportal
    • Please note that the metadata need to be reharvested if the metadata is already in geoportal prior to this update in order to build the hierarchy

  • Configure hierarchy search facet

    • Open geoportal/app/main/templates/SearchPanel.html in a html editor

    • Find the following section, and update its property as needed. the hierarchy field need to match with what is defined in EvaluatorFor_ISO.js, please visit Customize-search-panel on how to update the search facet

      <div class="g-filter-collapse" data-dojo-type="app/search/HierarchyTree" data-dojo-props=" field:'src_category_cat', label:'${i18n.search.criteria.hierarchicalCategory}'"> </div>

    • Save the updates.

  • Open geoportal to verify the facet is working in the search panel.

Manage/update the hierarchy field

In some cases, there might be situation that the metadata itself does not contain all the hierarchy information, or the hierarchy information need to be updated after the metadata has been harvested, geoportal make it possible to dynamically manage the value of hierarchy field.

Following are the steps (in addition to the steps above):

  • Enable setField editing

    • Open geoportal/src/main/webapp/app/context/app-config.js in editor

    • Find the following section

      edit: { setField: { allow: false, adminOnly: false } },

    • Set allow to true

    • Set adminOnly to true

    • Save the changes

  • Update hierarchy values for records
    • Open Geoportal > login as an administrator
    • Find the record to be updated
    • Go to Options > Set Field > Advanced
    • Enter the hierarchy field whose value will be updated, e.g. user_category_cat (field needs to be prefixed with "user_" and matches with what is defined in EvaluatorFor_ISO.js)
    • Enter the value for that field, e.g. Category|Human|Economy|Recreation
    • Select one of the update option > Update
  • Open geoportal to verify the hierarchy information has been updated for the record.

Frequently Asked Questions*

  • Can I use a different hierarchy separator such as "<" instead of "|"?

    • Yes. By default, "|" is used as the separator, if other separator is desired, replace delimiter declaration in hierarchy_tokenizer and reverse_hierarchy_tokenizer within elastic-mappings.json and elastic-mappings-7.json (geoportal/src/main/resources/config/), then recreate Elastic Search index.

  • Can I configure hierarchy to be similar to my WAF/UNC folder structure?

    • Yes. see "Example 2" in geoportal/src/main/resources/metadata/js/EvaluatorFor_ISO.js

  • Can I manage/update the hierarchy after the metadata has been harvested?

    • Yes. See section 2 above

  • Can I configure hierarchy using fields in a database table?

    • Yes.

  • Can I configure hierarchy using a service that contain the mapping between the metadata and its categories?

    • Yes.
Clone this wiki locally