Re: [VuFind-Tech] advanced search

[Demian K. <dem...@vi...>]

Thanks for catching this -- it does indeed look like a bug, and I have fixed it as of r2435.

However, I believe the only fix that is needed is the addition of the missing parentheses when the $excludes array is put together at the end.  The earlier section of the buildQuery method should not be changed -- it appears to be correct, just confusing due to the way the data structure is arranged.

$params['group'] represents a single search group on the advanced search screen, not the entire search.  Every "bool" element within the elements of the $params['group'] array will always have the same value, since there is only one boolean setting per group.  Thus, you should only need to look at $params['group'][0]['bool'] in order to figure out how to handle the entire group.  By moving the $excludes and $groups assignments within the "foreach ($params['group'] as $group)" loop, you will actually end up adding redundant terms to your search.

I would recommend reverting your changes except for the fix to the NOT clause.  Please let me know if you still see problems after doing that; this is somewhat dense code, so it's possible I'm misunderstanding something... but I'm pretty confident of my understanding at this point.

- Demian

From: Tuan Nguyen [mailto:tu...@yo...]
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2010 4:35 PM
To: vuf...@li...
Subject: [VuFind-Tech] advanced search

Hello everyone, I'm not sure if this is a bug or not. I may have misunderstood the intention of the original code. My search is:

Group 0:
 AllFields: dog
 NO Terms

Group 1:
  AllFields: cat
  NO Terms

The query I am expecting is NOT ((AllFields: dog) OR (AllFields: cat))

However,the query that got built was: "() NOT (AllFields:dog) OR (AllFields:cat)"

See http://vufind.org/demo/Search/Results?join=AND&bool0[]=NOT&lookfor0[]=dog&type0[]=AllFields&lookfor0[]=&type0[]=AllFields&lookfor0[]=&type0[]=AllFields&bool1[]=NOT&lookfor1[]=cat&type1[]=AllFields&submit=Find&illustration=-1


Looking at the buildQuery method in sys/Solr.php,

                // Advanced Search
                if (isset($params['group'])) {
                    $thisGroup = array();
                    // Process each search group
                    foreach ($params['group'] as $group) {
                        // Build this group individually as a basic search
                        $thisGroup[] = $this->buildQuery(array($group), $noCapBools);
                    }
                    // Is this an exclusion (NOT) group or a normal group?
                    if ($params['group'][0]['bool'] == 'NOT') {
                        $excludes[] = join(" OR ", $thisGroup);
                    } else {
                        $groups[] = join(" ".$params['group'][0]['bool']." ", $thisGroup);
                    }
                }

It appears that the whole search is automatically a "NOT" search if the first group is a "NO Terms". I changed it to

                // Advanced Search
                if (isset($params['group'])) {
                    $thisGroup = array();
                    // Process each search group
                    foreach ($params['group'] as $group) {
                        // Build this group individually as a basic search
                        $thisGroup[] = $this->buildQuery(array($group));
                        // Is this an exclusion (NOT) group or a normal group?
                        if ($group['bool'] == 'NOT') {
                            $excludes[] = join(" OR ", $thisGroup);
                        } else {
                            $groups[] = join(" ".$group['bool']." ", $thisGroup);
                        }
                    }
                }

Also, the NOT was not applied to the whole exclusion, but only to the first one

        // and concatenate exlucsion after that
        if (count($excludes) > 0) {
            $query .= " NOT (" . join(") OR (", $excludes) . ")";
        }

So I changed it to

        // and concatenate exlucsion after that
        if (count($excludes) > 0) {
            $query .= " NOT ((" . join(") OR (", $excludes) . "))";
        }


Now, this is giving me what I expected.

http://www-dev.library.yorku.ca/find/Search/Results?join=AND&bool0[]=NOT&lookfor0[]=dog&type0[]=AllFields&bool1[]=NOT&lookfor1[]=cat&type1[]=AllFields