Search API

Service endpoint

HTTP POST to the following path:

/fr/service/persistence/search/$app/$form

Example query

A search query uses HTTP POST to provide an XML document containing the search criteria as well as information about the response to provide.

The request MUST have a Content-Type: application/xml header.

Here is an example of a very simple query:

<search>
    <query/>
    <query path="details/title" match="substring">Peace</query>
    <page-size>10</page-size>
    <page-number>1</page-number>
</search>

The following shows for example a search from the demo Bookshelf form:

<search>
    <!-- Free-text search query -->
    <query/>
    <!-- Structured search query -->
    <query path="details/title" match="substring">Peace</query>
    <query path="details/author"/>
    <query path="details/language" match="exact">en</query>
    <drafts>include</drafts>
    <!-- Paging -->
    <page-size>10</page-size>
    <page-number>1</page-number>
</search>

Query elements

The query element is the most complex element. It is used for full-text and structured search. Full-text search and structured search are exclusive: either Form Runner performs one, or the other.

Full-text search

The first <query> element is used for free text search: its attributes, if any, are ignored, and its text content, if present, is taken to be the text of the search. The result details to return is still determined by the subsequent <query> elements with summary-field set to true. See below for more information about the response format. The exact semantic of the full-text search is implementation-dependent.

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2022.1]

The <query> element used for full-text search is no longer necessarily the first element. Instead, it is the first element that doesn't specify a path attribute. Similarly, <query> elements used for structured search are those with a path attribute. This means that it is no longer required to have an empty <query> element at the beginning.

Structured search

When building a structured search query, Form Runner first looks at all controls in the source form that have the class fr-summary or fr-search. These are used to build the request.

For each such control found, a <query> element is added to the request, with the following attributes and text value:

As of Orbeon Forms 2020.1:

XML Node

Required

Function

path attribute

Yes

path to the XML element (see Search paths below)

match attribute

match type: substring, exact, token (see Match types below)

control attribute

control type (input, textarea, select, etc.), used if match is absent

text value

search string

If the match attribute is absent, the control attribute is used to determine the match type:

input or textarea: implies match="substring"
select or end with -select: implies match="token"
any other value: implies match="exact"

Historical attributes, which were informative only:

Attribute

Function

name

control name as entered in Form Builder

label

control label as entered in Form Builder

type

datatype associated with the control in Form Builder

search-field

indicate whether the control must show as Summary page search

summary-field

indicate whether the control must show as Summary page column

Match types

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2020.1] for relational databases

The match attribute can have the following values:

substring: a substring match is requested (default)
exact: an exact match is requested
token: a token match is requested (for multiple selection controls)

NOTE: The exact semantics for substring is not specified at the moment (the search implementation may use a "starts-with", a "contains" logic, or something else).

Search paths

The path attribute can be looked at as a search key. Say your documents looks like this:

<form>
    <personal-info>
        <first-name>John</first-name>
        <last-name>Doe</last-name>
        <birth-date>1980-01-01</birth-date>
    </personal-info>
</form>

Then the path personal-info/first-name matches XML elements following the XPath notation, relative to the root element of the document.

Note that for a given form definition, there is a limited number of search paths, which are fully determined by the XPath expressions present on the form definition's control bindings and model binds for controls that have the fr-summary or fr-search classes.

The paths sent by Form Runner are usually simple paths, but there are some exceptions:

Form Builder uses more complex paths out of the box, for example:

xhtml:head/
  xforms:model[@id = 'fr-form-model']/
    xforms:instance[@id = 'fr-form-metadata']/
      */
        description[@xml:lang = $fb-lang]

Forms where user has entered XPath expressions manually to bind controls to XML data will contain those paths.

If the persistence layer is able to run XPath expressions (as eXist or other XML databases can), then the path provided by the search request can be executed. However, XPath evaluation is not absolutely required. For example with non-XML (relational, key/value) data stores, it is easier to consider the search path as an opaque search key that uniquely identifies the control to search.

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2016.2]
- Paths generated by Form Runner (including from the Summary page) no longer contain [1] suffixes.
- The built-in relational search implementation assumes paths which do not contain such suffixes. Orbeon Forms 2016.2.1 strips such suffixes for backward-compatibility (see ).
[UNTIL Orbeon Forms 2016.1 included]
- Paths generated by Form Runner (including from the Summary page) contain [1] after element names, to guarantee the query only returns one node.
- This is done to make it easier to implement the persistence layer for databases like MySQL that don't allow multiple values to be handled in a custom way. (Specifically with MySQL, if multiple values are found, always returns a space separated string.)

Old query elements

2013-05-24: Removal
- All the previously deprecated elements mentioned below have been removed, and are not sent to the search API.
2011-11-22: Deprecation
- app and form elements:
  - these elements are deprecated and will be removed in the future. Since Orbeon Forms 3.9, they are present but empty
  - to obtain the app and form name being queried, extract them instead from the search URL
- sort-key element:
  - this element was present but never used and will be removed in the future

Returning all indexed controls

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2022.1]

You can return all the form's indexed controls, even if they don't have any matching <query> element, by specifying return-all-indexed-fields="true" on the root element of the query:

<search return-all-indexed-fields="true">
    <query path="details/title" match="substring">Peace</query>
    <page-size>10</page-size>
    <page-number>1</page-number>
</search>

For the search response in this case, see further below.

Metadata queries

query elements can also be used to add constraints on metadata fields, using the metadata attribute, which can take one of the following values:

created: creation date/time
created-by: username of the user who created the data
last-modified: last modification date/time
last-modified-by: username of the user who last modified the data
workflow-stage: name of the workflow stage associated with the data

In that case, the path attribute must be absent and the match attribute must be present, with one of the following values:

gte: greater than or equal to
lt: less than
exact: exact match

The gte and lt match values are used for date/time fields (creation or last modification date/time), and the exact match value is used for string fields (created by, last modified by, or workflow stage). Date/time values are expected to be in ISO format.

Examples of metadata queries:

<query metadata="created" match="gte">2022-01-01T00:00:00Z</query>
<query metadata="last-modified-by" match="exact">admin</query>

The absence or presence of a metadata query element doesn't affect the inclusion of the created, created-by, last-modified, last-modified-by, and workflow-stage attributes on the <document> elements in the search response.

Sorting

By default, search results are sorted by last modification date/time, from most recent to oldest. It is possible to specify another sort order by adding a sort attribute to the search query, on one of the <query> elements, with one of the following values:

asc: ascending order
desc: descending order

Example (query element also used to match a substring):

<query path="details/title" match="substring" sort="asc">Peace</query>

Example (query element used only for sorting):

<query path="details/title" sort="asc"/>

At the moment, only a single sort attribute is supported, but the last modification date/time is always used as a secondary sort key.

Paging

The page-size and page-number elements control paging.

page-size attribute: how many results to return at the most
page-number attribute: page number to result, starting with 1

Language

Since 2016.2

The Form Runner home page doesn't send the <lang> element, and the implementations of the API that ship with Orbeon Forms don't use it even if provided. Instead, when the persistence knows about multiple values corresponding to different languages for a "control", it returns all the values. In turn, the summary page displays all the values. This is inline with what is done for controls inside repeated grids or repeated sections, which can have multiple values.

Up to 2016.1

The lang element contains the current language used by the user in the summary page. If the form contains language-dependent controls, this information can be used to refine the search. Only Form Builder makes use of this capability.

For example, Form Builder allows storing a form title and description in more than one language. When searching the form title control, the expectation of the user is likely to be that, if the user interface is in English, the English title will be searched and not, for example, the Italian title. In this case, the search path contains a special variable, $fb-lang, which allows the persistence implementation to discriminate on the language:

xhtml:head/
  xforms:model[@id = 'fr-form-model']/
    xforms:instance[@id = 'fr-form-metadata']/
      */
        description[@xml:lang = $fb-lang]

In persistence implementations that support XPath, the variable can be either scoped or replaced in the path by the value provided by the incoming <lang> element.

In persistence implementations that don't support XPath, this kind of queries are a little more tricky. The path can:

either be used as a plain key and ignore the <lang> element (therefore ignoring the language-sensitive search)
or be translated to the native query language of the persistence implementations

Drafts

The <drafts> element is used to tell the implementation of the persistence API which documents to return with respect to drafts:

If the element is present, it must contain one of the following values:
- exclude: don't include drafts. This value isn't used by Form Runner, but could be used in the future, and [SINCE 2016.2] is supported by the persistence for relational databases.
- only: only return drafts.
- include: return both drafts and non-drafts. This is the default if the <drafts> element is missing.
If the element isn't present, then the persistence must return drafts and non-drafts alike.

NOTE: exclude is not used in 4.6.2, but it could be used in the future.

If the value of <drafts> is only, then the <drafts> element can optionally have one of the following attributes:

for-document-id="$document" instructs the persistence to only return drafts for the given document id, of which there can be 0 or 1. This is used by Form Runner's /edit page to check if a draft exists for a given document that is being opened, so it can, when appropriate, ask users if they prefer to open the draft or non-draft document.
for-never-saved-document="true" instructs the persistence to only return drafts for documents that were never saved. This is used by Form Runner's:
- /new page to check if existing drafts already exist, in which case it might ask users if they prefer to start a new document or edit one of those drafts.
- /summary page if that page gets drafts-for-never-saved-document=true in the URL.

Here are examples of requests/response in edit mode. Only zero or one document can be returned:

<search>
    <drafts for-document-id="fbba3db82e7fb1e0054e97d49026b5d303a1fa2f">only</drafts>
    <page-size>10</page-size>
    <page-number>1</page-number>
    <lang>en</lang>
</search>

<documents search-total="1">
    <document created="2014-08-15T17:12:04.570Z" last-modified="2014-08-15T17:18:50.993Z" draft="true"
              name="fbba3db82e7fb1e0054e97d49026b5d303a1fa2f" operations="*">
        <details/>
    </document>
</documents>

And in new mode, zero or more documents can be returned:

<search>
    <drafts for-never-saved-document="true">only</drafts>
    <page-size>10</page-size>
    <page-number>1</page-number>
    <lang>en</lang>
</search>

<documents search-total="2">
    <document created="2014-08-15T17:05:11.563Z" last-modified="2014-08-15T17:05:11.563Z" draft="true"
              name="dac2971cca0e71e36880e890297ab8818a5298e0" operations="*">
        <details/>
    </document>
    <document created="2014-08-15T17:04:55.383Z" last-modified="2014-08-15T17:04:55.383Z" draft="true"
              name="b0e28c1ed4ea6cfab445b40bb9dcb8bc6c296c92" operations="*">
        <details/>
    </document>
</documents>

Operations

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2019.1] The <operations> element is used to tell the implementation of the persistence API which documents to return with respect to operations the user can perform.

When the element isn't present, or before Orbeon Forms 2019.1 (when it wasn't supported), the search API returns any document the user can either read, update, or delete.
When specified, the element must take the form <operations any-of="update delete"/>, where the value of the any-of attribute is a space-separated list of one or more operations. In this example, the search API will only return documents the user can either update or delete, but not documents the user can only read.

Versioning

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2018.2] If the implementation of the persistence API supports form versioning, the Orbeon-Form-Definition-Version request header tells which version of the form definition is requested. Possible values are:
- missing: indicates the latest published version
- a specific version number (must be a positive integer): to indicate that the form definition with that version must be searched
- all: [SINCE Orbeon Forms 2020.1 and 2019.2.3] to do a search across all versions of the form definition, which used to be what was done until Orbeon Forms 2018.1; while this can lead to unexpected results (see below), callers of the API who relied on this behavior might find this backward compatible mode useful; if you are interested in this in the context of the summary page, see the .
[UNTIL Orbeon Forms 2018.1] The search is done across all versions of the form definition. This can lead to unexpected results as different form definition versions may not have the same controls.

Query response

Example

The persistence layer must return a document of this shape:

<documents search-total="4" page-size="10" page-number="1" query="">
    <document created="2011-05-06T14:58:40.376-07:00"
              last-modified="2011-09-12T12:05:07.3-07:00"
              name="e8bfd3ba63fa12a8b59cdd5c08369a35"
              draft="false"
              operations="create read update delete">
        <details>
            <detail>The Terror</detail>
            <detail>Dan Simmons</detail>
            <detail>en</detail>
        </details>
    </document>
    <document created="2011-05-06T14:58:39.611-07:00"
              last-modified="2011-09-12T12:05:06.914-07:00"
              name="9531a191c77b75c417e9874427fa21f7"
              draft="false" 
              operations="create read update delete">
        <details>
            <detail>The Little Prince</detail>
            <detail>Antoine de Saint-Exupéry</detail>
            <detail>fr</detail>
        </details>
    </document>
    <!-- ... more <document> elements ... -->
</documents>

Root element

The root element contains these attributes:

search-total attribute: number of documents matched by the current search.
[Up to 2016.1] total attribute: total number of documents in the database for this app/form.
[Up to 2016.1] page-size attribute: echos of the query's attribute.
[Up to 2016.1] page-number attribute: echos of the query's attribute.
[Up to 2016.1] query attribute: echos of the full-text query text.

Document elements

For each of the documents found, a <document> element is returned with the following attributes:

created
- creation date in ISO format
last-modified
- last modification date in ISO format
name
- document identifier,
- this must match the identifier created by Form Runner when saving the data
draft
- true or false, depending on whether the form data is a draft (autosaved) or not
operations
- a space separated subset of the following token: read, write, update, and delete, whichever operations the user is allowed to perform; also see
created-by
- [SINCE Orbeon Forms 2021.1]
- username of the user who created the data, or missing if there is no user information
created-by-groupname
- [SINCE Orbeon Forms 2021.1]
- group name of the user who created the data, or missing if there is no user information
last-modified-by
- [SINCE Orbeon Forms 2021.1]
- username of the user who last modified the data, or missing if there is no user information
workflow-stage
- [SINCE Orbeon Forms 2020.1]
- name of the workflow stage associated with the data, or missing if there is no stage information

Detail elements

Each document contains one <detail> element in the order determined by the <query> elements with a summary-field set to true in the request. The text value of the <detail> element is the value of the control in the document found.

<document created="2022-03-30T18:42:38.168Z" 
          last-modified="2022-03-30T18:42:38.168Z" 
          name="e8bfd3ba63fa12a8b59cdd5c08369a35" 
          draft="false" 
          operations="create read update delete">
    <details>
        <detail>The Terror</detail>
        <detail>Dan Simmons</detail>
        <detail>en</detail>
    </details>
</document>

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2022.1]

All elements contain a path attribute that identifies the control.

<document created="2022-03-30T18:42:38.168Z" 
          last-modified="2022-03-30T18:42:38.168Z" 
          name="e8bfd3ba63fa12a8b59cdd5c08369a35" 
          draft="false" 
          operations="create read update delete">
    <details>
        <detail path="details/title">The Terror</detail>
        <detail path="details/author">Dan Simmons</detail>
        <detail path="details/language">en</detail>
    </details>
</document>

Prior to Orbeon Forms 2022.1, the controls had to be identified by position.

When return-all-indexed-fields="true" is specified in the search query, all indexed controls are returned as separate <detail> elements, and not only the controls specified in the search query with <query>, if any.

Indexed controls are controls that are marked, in Form Builder, as:

"Index control"
"Show on Summary page"
"Allow bulk edit"

Service endpoint

Example query

Query elements

Full-text search

Structured search

Match types

Search paths

Old query elements

Returning all indexed controls

Metadata queries

Sorting

Paging

Language

Since 2016.2

Up to 2016.1

Drafts

Operations

Versioning

Query response

Example

Root element

Document elements

Detail elements

See also