topic Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags? in Alfresco Archive

Possible to filter by multiple tags?

zbennett — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:44:22 GMT

Hi all,I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to filter my Document Library by multiple tags at once. In other words, I want to filter by one tag and then narrow my filter down with another tag.In an ideal world, I would be able to use the tag list on the left side of the page:[img]http://zandad

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

stevegreenbaum — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:50:18 GMT

Here's a possible workaround for your users while you figure out how to allow multi-tagging. Use the site search bar to find the images you are looking for. Example, enter – 1stTag 2ndTag png – this acts like an AND. In this example I assumed you are only looking for png images. Certainly not as precise as what you are striving for, but just a thought.

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

zbennett — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:11:26 GMT

Hi Steven,

I gave your suggestion a shot and it didn't work for me. I tried searching for "anthony joy png" and it found some of my PNGs, but it didn't find any of my images tagged with 'anthony' and/or 'joy'. I do have several PNGs that are tagged with both 'anthony' and 'joy', so it isn't my fault!

To use the search to find the images I want, I have to do a search for "anthony" first, and then do another search for "joy" to refine my results. As I mentioned above, this is quite undesirable…not to mention the lack of file management options available on the search results screen. Does anyone know if there is a way to search for multiple tags/terms in a single query?

On a side note, I think there might be a bug with searching for file extensions. When I search for "png" it only finds PNGs with which the last character of the file name is a letter. That's a jumbly sentence to wrap your head around, so here are some examples:

When searching for "png" the following file names will or will not be found.

Is found - the last character before '.png' is a letter

myimage.png

Is found - the last character before '.png' is a letter

my_image.png

is found - the last character before '.png' is a letter, even upper case letters are fine

MY_IMAGE.png

Is not found - the last character before '.png' is a number

myimage12.png

is not found - the last character before '.png' is not a letter

myimage_.png

Is this a known issue? I'm headed over to http://issues.alfresco.com for the first time to see if anyone knows about it.

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

stevegreenbaum — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:40:06 GMT

There does seem to be a problem with the search in that I can't always explain the results I receive. However, in the case of "tag1 tag2 png" I do get all of the documents I expected, but some additional ones I didn't expect. Not sure why you aren't seeing all of the images you are expecting. Do a search on the each tag separately to see if it finds the images you are looking for, if not, perhaps one of the tags isn't being indexed.

Note that all of the images you are looking for must live in the document library vs. in the Alfresco repository. The Share search only look at Share documents.

In my testing it seems as if the search was doing an OR on the second search term when I had three search terms (tag1 tag2 png), but when I put just "tag1 tag2" it didn't find any images that have both of the tags. So it doesn't look at more than one tag on an a document at time it would seem. Let me know if you've found any relevant jira issues that would explain this. Thanks

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

zbennett — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:53:31 GMT

Searching for an individual tag works perfectly. Also, all of my files do live in the Document Library.

Speaking on not being able to explain search results, it seems that things have changed or I was mistaken before. I *think* that I was able to search for one tag and then refine my results by searching for another tag. Now it seems that performing a second search simply searches the entire site again - it finds all of the files with the second tag, not just the files that have both tags (which I suppose makes sense). It's probably safe to say that my original tests were not thorough enough……..the more you know, eh?

On that note, can anyone point me in the right direction to learn about creating advanced filters for the Document Library?

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

stevegreenbaum — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:50:35 GMT

I reported the problem via Jira - https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/ALF-4400

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

zbennett — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:56:08 GMT

Thanks! I voted for the issue and subscribed to it.

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

zbennett — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:51:46 GMT

Hi all,

I've returned to this issue in my mission to customize Alfresco to my company's needs.

While digging through web scripts, I found some interesting references to filters in org/alfresco/cmis/children.get.js. I *think* the script uses the "filter=tag|tag_name" argument from the request URL in this snippet from children.get.js:

// property filter
    model.filter = args[cmis.ARG_FILTER];
    if (model.filter === null)
    {
        model.filter = "*";
    }
‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure what cmis.ARG_FILTER equates to (though I assume it's "filter"). The big mystery for me here, though, is this model object. I see it all over the place in various web scripts, but I don't understand how it works or what its exact purpose is. It seems like the model object is responsible for something pivotal at the end of the children.get.js script where it reads:

// retrieve children
    var page = paging.createPageOrWindow(args);
    var paged = cmis.queryChildren(model.node, model.types, orderBy, page);
    model.results = paged.results;
    model.cursor = paged.cursor;
‍‍‍‍‍‍

My assumption is that model gets sent off somewhere else to be parsed and turned into the HTML that represents the document library for my site. Can anyone confirm this? if so, can you point me to where model.filter is applied to model.results? I'd really like to customize the way this works so I can filter by multiple tags.

Thanks in advance!

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

zbennett — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 20:14:14 GMT

Ok, I've made HUGE headway!

I'm now able to filter a document library by multiple tags. I don't have support worked into the UI yet, though. As it stands, I filter by multiple, comma-delimited tags by typing them directly into the URL in my browser. For example, "filter=tag|tag_name" can now be "filter=tag|tag_name1,tag_name2,tag_name3" and it will only return items that have all three tags.

I'm still not sure how data passes through all of the little intricacies of Alfresco, but I found that filter.lib.js is responsible for forming filter-based query strings. The filter.lib.js script can be found in classpath:/alfresco/templates/webscripts/org/alfresco/slingshot/documentlibrary/.

It looks like filter.lib.js handles any filters applied through the panel on the left-hand side of the document library (under the Documents, Library, and Tags headers) through a switch statement that starts on line 85.

switch (String(filter))‍

I found the "tag" case on line 176 and modified it as follows:

case "tag":
    // Remove any trailing "/" character
    if (filterData.charAt(filterData.length - 1) == "/")
    {
        filterData = filterData.slice(0, -1);
    }

    // Allow filtering by multiple, comma-delimited tags
    var tagArray = new Array();;
    if (filterData.indexOf(",") >= 0 && filterData.indexOf(",") < filterData.length - 1)
    {
        filterParams.query = "+PATH:\"" + parsedArgs.rootNode.qnamePath + "//*\"";
         
        tagArray = filterData.split(",");
        for (var lcv = 0; lcv < tagArray.length; lcv ++)
        {
            filterParams.query = filterParams.query + " +PATH:\"/cm:taggable/cm:" + search.ISO9075Encode(tagArray[lcv]) + "/member\"";
        }
    }
    // Use the original code
    else
    {
        filterParams.query = "+PATH:\"" + parsedArgs.rootNode.qnamePath + "//*\" +PATH:\"/cm:taggable/cm:" + search.ISO9075Encode(filterData) + "/member\"";
    }
    break;‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

I hope to add further explanation as I learn more about how all of this works!

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

zbennett — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:46:13 GMT

I can now click additional tags to refine my filter! The UI still doesn't update the way I'd like it to, but I'm getting closer.

First, I changed the way I handle multiple tags so that it splits by ", " instead of just "," (adding a space after the comma makes the output on the page a bit nicer). This required a change to the code I posted above for filters.lib.js as follows:

if (filterData.indexOf(", ") >= 0 && filterData.indexOf(", ") < filterData.length - 1)
            {
                filterParams.query = "+PATH:\"" + parsedArgs.rootNode.qnamePath + "//*\"";
                
                tagArray = filterData.split(", ");
                for (var lcv = 0; lcv < tagArray.length; lcv ++)
                {
                    filterParams.query = filterParams.query + " +PATH:\"/cm:taggable/cm:" + search.ISO9075Encode(tagArray[lcv]) + "/member\"";
                }
            }‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

The next piece to this puzzle seems to be documentlist-min.js. Since the -min.js files are such a pain to read, I'll use the regular documentlist.js in my example. You can find these in tomcat\webapps\share\components\documentlibrary.

Around line 2500, I added a conditional to the successHandler function that checks to see if you're adding a new tag to an existing tag:

 var successHandler = function DL__uDL_successHandler(sRequest, oResponse, oPayload)
         {
            destroyLoaderMessage();
            // Updating the Doclist may change the file selection
            var fnAfterUpdate = function DL__uDL_sH_fnAfterUpdate()
            {
               YAHOO.Bubbling.fire("selectedFilesChanged");
            };
            this.afterDocListUpdate.push(fnAfterUpdate);
            
            Alfresco.logger.debug("currentFilter was:", this.currentFilter, "now:", successFilter);
            Alfresco.logger.debug("currentPage was [" + this.currentPage + "] now [" + successPage + "]");
            
            //list multiple tags if appropriate
            if (this.currentFilter.filterId == "tag" && successFilter.filterId == "tag") {
                successFilter.filterData = successFilter.filterData + ", " + this.currentFilter.filterData;
            }
            this.currentFilter = successFilter;
            this.currentPage = successPage;‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Then, around line 2615, I had to modify the _buildDocListParams function to do something similar. This time I used "%2C%20" (the hex value of ", "):

// Filter parameters
         params += "?filter=" + encodeURIComponent(obj.filter.filterId);
         if (obj.filter.filterData && obj.filter.filterId !== "path")
         {
             if (obj.filter.filterId == "tag" && this.currentFilter.filterId == "tag") {
                params += "&filterData=" + encodeURIComponent(obj.filter.filterData) + "%2C%20" + encodeURIComponent(this.currentFilter.filterData);
             }
             else {
                params += "&filterData=" + encodeURIComponent(obj.filter.filterData);   
             }
         }‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

These modifications allow me to select one tag, then another, and another, and another to keep refining my filter. It works pretty well so far, but I need to figure out how to modify the UI so tags can easily be removed - as of right now, you have to reload a page to clear the old filters. As I mentioned above, the Tags twister on the left doesn't update accordingly, but I hope to fix that sooner than later.

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

rillest — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 12:54:12 GMT

Hi!

The "filter by multiple tags" feature looks incredible, have you developed this any further?

Regards
Rickard

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

zbennett — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:28:06 GMT

Unfortunately, I haven't had the time for Alfresco development in the past few months. There are only a couple of us working on our Alfresco implementation at my company, and our attention was required on other projects throughout the winter. I hope to return to Alfresco development in the near future, though. I will post any updates to my multi-tag filtering in this thread, so please feel free to subscribe!

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

nicholasellis — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:52:55 GMT

Would love to see this development continue as well. We have a fairly complicated academic tool/learning site that we're working on, with fairly complex tagging systems for our documents and training videos (over 200 tags). To be able to sort through a incremental tag sort… brilliant.

Is this currently in a functional state at all, or should I hold of on having our technical team try and implement?

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

chapeaurouge — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:31:48 GMT

I reported the problem via Jira - https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/ALF-4400

Hello,

I have commented on the bug, which was marked as "Closed". I am now on 3.4d, tried it, but it didn't work. (and tags don't even show on my left pane)

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

zbennett — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:49:45 GMT

Would love to see this development continue as well. We have a fairly complicated academic tool/learning site that we're working on, with fairly complex tagging systems for our documents and training videos (over 200 tags). To be able to sort through a incremental tag sort… brilliant.

Is this currently in a functional state at all, or should I hold of on having our technical team try and implement?

Hi Nicholas, I was using 3.3 CE at the time of writing and this was functional "enough." The basic functionality worked just fine - you could click a tag to add it to the list, then click a previously selected tag to remove that from the list.

Some known issues include:
-You can't remove a tag immediately after adding it; you must add another tag before removing the previous.
-The list of selected tags across the top doesn't always calculate correctly.
-Each combination of tags is added to the list of tags in the left-hand pane (i.e. If you select "tag1" and "tag2" then "tag1, tag2" appears to become a new tag). These combined tags go away after leaving and returning to the document library.

If you consider implementing this, I highly recommend you do so in a test environment first. I would consider this to be in a usable state for personal use, but not for situations where a user might view it as broken.

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

nicholasellis — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 22:27:25 GMT

Hi Z,

Thanks for the reply, much appreciated. I implemented your autotagger from the previous thread, and that really is a nice piece of work. I'll implement this tagsearch, and see how it goes on a test platform. This project will be for a small group of content developers, so we're fairly tolerant of things acting a bit odd. Once the project moves into a full development stage I'll see if we can task a coder to work on this full time to zap some of the bugs.

Nick

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

zbennett — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 22:31:03 GMT

Hi Nicholas,

It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside to know that my work is actually being used, thanks! Keep me in the loop if you do end up developing this some more - I would love to stay attached to it (and I might even volunteer to update the tutorial accordingly).

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

nicholasellis — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 23:22:34 GMT

Z,

Will definitely keep you in the loop. Your work, after all. I just appreciate you taking the initiative.

We tagged about 3k audio files with your autotagger this morning that we'll be using in an ESL context. Saved us…. well, a lot of hours. Now to be able to search those via differentiated tags…. :wink:

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

nicholasellis — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 23:38:06 GMT

By the way, a noob question (sorry, I'm not the programmer of my group!)

After modifying your documentlist.js as per your code above, do you compile and replace the documentlist-min.js file as well?

(edited to say: yep, that fixed it. Got a warning on the google compiler, but ignored it; still seemed to work. After restarting Tomcat, I noticed similar behaviour to Z's comments above: the tag twister on the left doesn't update [a functionality that would be a nice next step], and the reset is only available by navigation, rather than by unclicking tags. Still this has the potential to be a terrific upgrade to extensive tagged libraries.)

Thnx

N

Re: Possible to filter by multiple tags?

zbennett — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 00:49:51 GMT

Hi N,

Yes, that's the preferred method. If you aren't already aware, Alfresco only reads the -min.js versions. All of the -min.js files have the "same" code in them as the regular .js files, but they've been run through the YUI Compressor. It mostly just shortens variable names and removes white space. (http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/compressor/)

You can cheat and skip using the YUI Compressor by renaming documentlist-min.js to something like documentlist-min.js.original and then renaming documentlist.js to documentlist-min.js. This is the method I use during development, but it's extremely poor practice to use in your production environment. If you intend to use Alfresco professionally for the long haul, you definitely want to figure out how to use the YUI Compressor now and continue to use it!

To be honest, it's not recommended that you change the core Alfresco files directly. You could implement this functionality as an extension, so to speak, but I don't know how. As long as you make backups of any core files that you change, you can get away with doing it the way I posted here. Please know that you will have to re-implement any changes to core files like this if you ever decide to upgrade to a newer version of Alfresco.