Search or filter using “and” for multiple terms – part 2

Good to hear from you again, and thanks for the question as well as the details of your goal.

You asked “Would it be possible in a future version to make “List filter” checkboxes rather than radio buttons and have more than one list filter on the Media > Assistant page?” After giving this some thought I decided that the amount of work required and, more important, the complexity it adds to the MLA user interface for most users make adding this feature impractical.

You asked “Or a way to search on “taxonomy 1” and order results by “taxonomy 2”?” and observed “in my setup (looking at the taxonomies of “year” and “ensemble”, they are not clickable to sort like other fields in the table are).” Taxonomy columns are not sortable because 1) many/most items have multiple term assignments (which one to sort on?) , and 2) the way term assignments are implemented in the database makes the SQL queries very complex.

You asked “Or another way to do an “advanced search” on the combination of “term A” on “taxonomy 1” and “term b” on “taxonomy 2”? But that sounds perhaps trickier.” This seems like an advanced alternative to the “Terms Search” popup feature in the Media/Assistant, with two term text boxes and their associated controls. Does that make sense? It might be possible to implement this as an example plugin. I will investigate further and post an update here when I have progress to report.

I will leave this topic unresolved for now. Let me know if the advanced “Terms Search” is what you have in mind. Thanks for your continued interest in the plugin.

Thanks a lot for your consideration and for the info. 

Yes, an advanced alternative to the “Terms Search” popup feature in the Media/Assistant, with two term text boxes and  their associated controls is what I was thinking of. 

Thanks for your patience while I refreshed my memory of the code behind the “Terms Search” popup. I am newly humbled by the tangle of logic required to fit all of the terms search features into the queries generated by the rest of the Media/Assistant filter options. I do not believe my first idea of two text boxes with two sets of controls can be made to work in the time I have available (or perhaps in my lifetime).

However, a variation of my original workaround may be feasible:

Make one of your two taxonomies the “List Filter” so its terms appear in the dropdown control at the top of the submenu table. Then do a terms search on the other taxonomy. The List Filter and Terms Search criteria will be applied with “AND” and give you the results you seek.

Would combining an independent “List Filter” dropdown control with one text box and set of controls be sufficient for your application? The “Terms Search List Filter” control would not disturb the existing List Filter on the Media/Assistant screen. Let me know what you think of this more practical alternative. Thanks for your understanding.

?? thanks very much for looking into it.

Would combining an independent “List Filter” dropdown control with one text box and set of controls be sufficient for your application? The “Terms Search List Filter” control would not disturb the existing List Filter on the Media/Assistant screen.

Yes, this would work out all right for my use case if I understand correctly. Basically sounds as though I could have list filters on two different terms at the same time and use one list filter in combination with a term search on a different term.

the thing I am trying to avoid is making people (who are more casual volunteers) go into the Media Library Assistant settings, change the list filter term, and go back to the media page to use it and then go back to reset the settings.

Thanks for your patience while I worked on this project. It turned out that making it an example plugin wasn’t practical, so I’ve added the new feature to the MLA core plugin.

Here is the Documentation tab update for the new feature:

Terms Search Taxonomy Filter
The “Search Terms” popup window can be configured with a taxonomy filter dropdown control like that found on the Media/Assistant admin submenu table. It works in the same way to restrict the search results to items assigned to the term selected in the dropdown. This filter overrides any taxonomy filtering already set on the Media/Assistant admin submenu.

To activate the control, navigate to the General tab and scroll down to the “Terms Search Taxonomy Filter parameters” section. There you can select the taxonomy on which to filter. You can also limit the number of levels in the term list and select whether to include the selected term’s “children”; lower-level terms that share the selected term as their “parent”.

I have uploaded a new MLA Development Version dated 20230504 that includes the new feature. You can find step-by-step instructions for using the Development Version in this earlier topic:

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Once the Development Version is installed you can go to the General tab, select your taxonomy and give the new feature a try.

The enhancement will be part of my next MLA version, but in the interim it would be great if you could install the Development Version and let me know if it works for you. Thanks for inspiring this MLA enhancement.

Thank you very much for working on it. This resolves my issue! It filters successfully using that set taxonomy and combines that with searching based on the value in the text field.

One suggestion: on the Terms Search dialog, when I tried to just use the filter at the top on its own without adding a search term in the text field, I got a message on the results page saying “Empty Terms Search; ignored”. It would be nice to be able to use that filter on its own as well as combined with a search. However, that’s a nice-to-have.

What a simple and obvious suggestion! This is why I like to have real users try the new features. Thank you.

??

I have uploaded a new MLA Development Version dated 20230506 that includes your suggestion. It would be great if you could install the new Development Version and let me know if the “filter only” searching works for you. Thanks for suggesting this MLA enhancement.

That works as expected. Thank you!

I have released MLA version 3.09, which contains the enhancements required for this topic.

I am marking this topic resolved, but please update it if you have any problems or further questions regarding MLA’s support for the new “Terms Search Taxonomy Filter” option. Thanks for inspiring this MLA improvement.