topic Re: Share, Aspects and Advanced Search in Alfresco Archive

Share, Aspects and Advanced Search

arnieaustin2 — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 06:41:45 GMT

After having problems with the examples found in books and via Google, I browsed through this forum.So, let me get this straight - we have Aspects, and can create custom forms to edit the properties - but we cannot search for content with these properties because for SOME reason, Advance Search cann

Re: Share, Aspects and Advanced Search

dantuffery — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 16:14:00 GMT

Is your aspect applied to a type? If so, change the condition to the type


<config evaluator="model-type" condition="my:type">
   <forms>
      <form id="search">
                ….
                ….
                </form>
        </forms>
</config>
‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Dan

Re: Share, Aspects and Advanced Search

arnieaustin2 — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 02:40:33 GMT

Uh, no:

<aspects>
   <aspect name="agy:agencyDocument">
      <title>Agency Document</title>
       <description>Agency Document Metadata</description>
       <parent>cm:titled</parent>

<aspect name="oag:matter">
   <title>OAG Matter</title>
   <description>OAG Matter Metadata</description>
   <parent>agy:agencyDocument</parent>

Re: Share, Aspects and Advanced Search

mitpatoliya — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 13:03:05 GMT

you can change this


<config evaluator="model-type" condition="agy_agencyDocument">
to this
<config evaluator="model-type" condition="agy:agencyDocument">
‍‍‍‍‍

Re: Share, Aspects and Advanced Search

arnieaustin2 — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 02:37:29 GMT

I started with that actually. So, is it just not possible?

Re: Share, Aspects and Advanced Search

afaust — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 11:57:00 GMT

Hello,

yes, it is currently not possible to setup a search form based <b>just</b> on an aspect. The reason for this is that there is no FormProcessor on the Repository tier that can handle aspect-based forms.
The only way to setup a search form for an aspect is by using

sys:base‍

as your type and providing your aspect properties as filter fields. Unfortunately, if the user does not enter anything in at least on of the filter fields, you will find all nodes that match your search string, as there is no way to tell the search to search for

ASPECT:"prefix:localName"‍

via the form configuration. The only way to change that is by forcing a hidden property value into your nodes and search form that you know is the same for all nodes that have the aspect - that way, there will be an implicit filter on a property only your aspect provides and the search can only find nodes that have it applied.

I used the following approach to define a search just for wiki articles:
1) Setup a content rule / policy, that applies

myPrefix:wikiArticle‍

to any content created in a site ./cm:wiki container
2) Define the aspect with a boolean property

myPrefix:isWikiArticle‍

with default value set to true
3) Setup a search form for

cm:content‍

that includes a hidden field

myPrefix:isWikiArticle‍

with predefined value of true

Regards
Axel

Edit: added code-blocks to prevent smileys on qnames (hopefully)

Re: Share, Aspects and Advanced Search

arnieaustin2 — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 14:12:24 GMT

Thanks! I can stop wondering/trying about it in the short term. But I was wondering, didn't I do something similar? My notes above didn't come out quite right, my aspects hierarchy is:

<aspect name="agy:agencyDocument">
   <parent>cm:titled</parent>
…
<aspect name="oag:matter">
   <parent>agy:agencyDocument</parent>
‍‍‍‍‍‍

So, am I not part way there already?

I have another related question: so, if I do not provide a search for for users to use initially, but create content and apply my aspect and metadata - either through the edit forms or via code - can I at least search for such content in code? That is a big problem if not.

Lastly, is this a planned fix for the future? Because I really consider it a major lack of functionality.

Re: Share, Aspects and Advanced Search

arnieaustin2 — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 14:17:43 GMT

Oh, one more thing, when setting up search: should I bother with:

<config>
   <simple-search-additional-attributes>
      <qname>{http://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/model/common/1.0}agencyId</qname>
…
‍‍‍‍‍

Re: Share, Aspects and Advanced Search

arnieaustin2 — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 15:55:22 GMT

So, if I setup a form where

evaluator="model-type" condition="sys:base"‍

on the search form, how do I have a search page for for each my 5 aspects? Like:

<blockcode>
<form labelId="aspect.agy_agencyDocument" descriptionId="aspect.agy_agencyDocument.search.description">sys:base</form>
<form labelId="aspect.agy_accountingDocument" descriptionId="aspect.agy_accountingDocument.search.description">sys:base</form>
<form labelId="aspect.agy_purchasingDocument" descriptionId="aspect.agy_purchasingDocument.search.description">sys:base</form>
<form labelId="aspect.oag_matter" descriptionId="aspect.oag_matter.search.description">sys:base</form>
<form labelId="aspect.ord_itemIdentification" descriptionId="aspect.ord_itemIdentification.search.description">sys:base</form>
</blockcode>

Re: Share, Aspects and Advanced Search

afaust — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 14:47:37 GMT

Hello,

1) If possible, I'd advise to avoid aspect type hierarchies, as they can be quite tricky in programmatic evaluation. I.e. if you would execute a

nodeService.hasAspect("cm:titled")‍

on a document with

agy:agencyDocument‍

, you might find yourself surprised it returns "false", since this aspect has not been applied directly. If you want your agency documents to always also have the

cm:titled‍

aspect, you could use it as a default aspect of your custom aspect.
That is not to say that aspect type hierarchies should never be used - I use them quite extensively in some use cases. But they are not always strictly necessary and there are simpler ways of handling aspect inheritence.

2) You can always search for content with aspects in code. The only limitation is in the UI configuration of Share Advanced Search. You can also search for content with aspects as an end user if you know how to write that query and how the aspects are named on a technical level. You can try it yourself by entering

ASPECT:"agy:agencyDocument"‍

in the quick search / keywords input.

3) If you want to have several different types of search forms / pages for your 5 aspects, you need to provide an "id" in the AdvancedSearch config-section, which references a specific form from

evaluator="model-type" condition="sys:base"‍

.
I'll share the configuration I used to get wiki search working:
<blockcode>
    <config evaluator="string-compare" condition="AdvancedSearch">
        <advanced-search>
            <forms>
                <form id="wiki-search" labelId="search.form.label.cm_content.wiki-search" descriptionId="search.form.desc.cm_content.wiki-search">cm:content</form>
            </forms>
        </advanced-search>
    </config>

    <config evaluator="model-type" condition="cm:content">
        <forms>
            <form id="wiki-search">
                <field-visibility>
                    <show id="cm:name" />
                    <show id="cm:modified" />
                    <show id="cm:modifier" />
                    <show id="sthi:wikiContentMarker" force="true" />
                </field-visibility>
                <appearance>
                    <field id="cm:modifier">
                        <control>
                            <control-param name="forceEditable">true</control-param>
                        </control>
                    </field>
                    <field id="cm:modified">
                        <control template="/org/alfresco/components/form/controls/daterange.ftl" />
                    </field>
                    <field id="sthi:wikiContentMarker">
                        <control template="/com/bcc/alfresco/sitehierarchy/components/form/controls/hiddenTrue.ftl" />
                    </field>
                </appearance>
            </form>
        </forms>
    </config>
</blockcode>

Note that I wrote up a small FTL myself to have a hidden field with default value "true" in the search form for the dummy property I've included in my aspect (which is

sthi:wikiContent‍

and doesn't appear anywhere in the configuration at all directly).

Regards
Axel

Re: Share, Aspects and Advanced Search

mitpatoliya — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 07:31:00 GMT

Thanks Axel for providing the insights and sharing the knowledge.
It is very valuable.

Re: Share, Aspects and Advanced Search

arnieaustin2 — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 21:28:35 GMT

Indeed very helpful and insightful, thank you for that. Using what you've said, along with the example included with the Alfresco book Business Solutions, I was able to completely replace the search form for cm:content and add all the potentially available aspect properties to search by.

So far, it is rendering, but none of the fields labels are showing up, even the ones for the field sets. These labels are defined in a registered file and the other forms see them (excepting the field set ids).

What does one have to do to get labels to show up in search?

Re: Share, Aspects and Advanced Search

elmarie — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:14:31 GMT

Hallo

How can I search on the property Category when using ALFRESCO SHARE. I would like to just type in a string that I have typed to do the search.
I do not want to use the advanced search as most of my users are very capable of buiding a search string with AND's and OR's.