How to search in catalog descriptions

[irbian]

I am missing some configuration? Looks like it's only searching between titles

[zoran995]

Hi, currently, the catalog search provider searches only in the dataset titles. Improvements to the catalog search are on our roadmap, but we don't have an exact timeline for it.
If you are interested in extending it, you can check

• https://github.com/TerriaJS/terriajs/blob/main/lib/Models/SearchProviders/CatalogSearchProvider.ts
• https://github.com/TerriaJS/terriajs/blob/main/lib/ModelMixins/SearchProviders/CatalogSearchProviderMixin.ts

[irbian]

Did you have any ideas on how to make the search performant when it has to check inside the descriptions of several WMS catalogs?

[glughi]

Hello,
looking at the code, in theory, it should already search in the data descriptions:

const searchString = ${modelToSave.name} ${modelToSave.uniqueId} ${modelToSave.description};

https://github.com/TerriaJS/terriajs/blob/bf542869cafd58e1f9e0ac28d231b404bdd5c612/lib/Models/SearchProviders/CatalogSearchProvider.ts#L44

[zoran995]

@glughi yeah, that is right, I should check the implementation details better. If the catalog item has a description in it, the search will find the dataset. But the description won't always be defined for externally loaded datasets, such as WMS, where the service description is inferred from the GetCapabilities response. It is not actually mapped to the catalog item description, but stored in the info stratum. It makes searching a bit more complex, so catalog search provider is not able to find the WMS. There is also a performance issue when loading the external services catalogue definition, which can be really slow; in that case, it becomes much harder to achieve a performant search. That is the reason we disabled loading of nested groups when doing search https://github.com/TerriaJS/terriajs/blob/main/lib/Models/SearchProviders/CatalogSearchProvider.ts#L84-L86

@irbian For performance, it might be best to use catalog index functionality, which is implemented with that use case in mind
https://docs.terria.io/guide/customizing/search-providers/#catalogindex. p.s. I haven't used it for quite some time, so let me know if you need help with setting it up or run into some issues, and I can try looking into more details