Search API

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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
No
match type: substring, exact, token (see Match types below)
control attribute
No
control type (input, textarea, select, etc.), used if match is absent
text value
No
search string
If the match attribute is absent, the control attribute is used to determine the match type:
input or textarea: imply match="substring"
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 field in Form Builder
search-field
indicate whether the field must show as Summary page search
summary-field
indicate whether the field 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 field 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 #2922).
[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, extractValue 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 fields
[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2022.1]
You can return all the form's indexed fields, 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.
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 "field", it returns all the values. In turn, the summary page displays all the values. This is inline with what is done for fields 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 fields, 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 field, 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-id" 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 oxf.fr.summary.show-version-selector.*.* property.
[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 fields.
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 Supporting permissions in your persistence API implementation​
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 field 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 field.
<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 fields had to be identified by position.
When return-all-indexed-fields="true" is specified in the search query, all indexed fields are returned as separate <detail> elements, and not only the fields specified in the search query with <query>, if any.
Indexed fields are fields that are marked, in Form Builder, as:
"Show in search"
"Show in Summary Page"
"Index control"
See also
​CRUD​
​List form data attachments​
​Form metadata​
​Caching​
​Versioning​
​Implementing a persistence service​
CRUD API
List form data attachments API
Last modified 4mo ago