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Search providers

Terriajs supports 2 types of search providers

  1. Catalog search provider
  2. Location search providers

Each search provider can be configured using following options

Name Required Type Default Description
name no string unknown Name of the search provider.
minCharacters no number catalogParameters.searchBar.minCharacters Minimum number of characters required for search to start.

Catalog search provider

type: catalog-search-provider

Catalog search provider is used to find the desired dataset. Catalog search provider can be used with or without static catalog index JSON file. Without catalog index each catalog group and item will be dynamically fetched from remote servers in the moment of the search, and for bigger catalog this will cause poor performance of search. For example when having WMS-group in catalog searching in that catalog will cause catalog to issue getCapabilities request, wait for response and then perform the search. TerriaJS supports only search provider of type catalog-search-provider

CatalogIndex

If your TerriaMap has many (>50) dynamic groups (groups which need to be loaded - for example CKAN, WMS-group...) it may be worth generating a static catalog index JSON file. This file will contain ID, name and description fields of all catalog items, which can be used to search through the catalog very quickly without needing to load dynamic references/groups (for example MagdaReference -> WebMapServiceCatalogGroup -> WebMapServiceCatalogItem).

The flexsearch library is used to index and search the catalog index file.

Note NodeJS v10 is not supported, please use v12 or v14.

To generate the catalog index:

  • yarn build-tools

  • node ./build/generateCatalogIndex.js -c config-url -b base-url where

    • config-url is URL to client-side-config file
    • base-url is URL to terriajs-server (this is used to load server-config and to proxy requests)
    • For example node ./build/generateCatalogIndex.js -c http://localhost:3001/config.json -b http://localhost:3001/

  • This will output three files

    • catalog-index.json
    • catalog-index-errors.json with any error messages which occurred while loading catalog members
    • catalog-index-errors-stack.json with errors stack
  • Set catalogIndexUrl config parameter to URL to catalog-index.json

This file will have to be re-generated manually every time the catalog structure changes - for example:

  • if items are renamed, or moved
  • dynamic groups are updated (for example, WMS server publishes new layers)

For more details see /buildprocess/generateCatalogIndex.ts

  • Run node ./build/generateCatalogIndex.js --help for argument documentation

Location search providers

Location search providers are used to search for locations on the map. TerriaJS currently supports two implementations of search providers:

Each `LocationSearchProvider support following confing options

Name Required Type Default Description
url yes string "" The URL of search provider.
recommendedListLength no number 5 Default amount of entries in the suggestion list.
flightDurationSeconds no number 1.5 Time to move to the result location.
isOpen no boolean true True if the search results of this search provider are visible by default; otherwise, false (user manually open search results).

BingMapsSearchProvider

type: bing-maps-search-provider

Bing maps search provider is based on commercial API which is provided by BingMaps. To enable it, it is necessary to add an apropriate Bing Maps API key as config parameter. This search provider as results returns addresses and a place name locations.

Name Required Type Default Description
key no string configParameters.bingMapsKey The Bing Maps key.
primaryCountry no string Australia Name of the country to prioritize the search results.
culture no string en-au Use the culture parameter to specify a culture for your request.The culture parameter provides the result in the language of the culture. For a list of supported cultures, see Supported Culture Codes
mapCenter no boolean true Whether the current location of the map center is supplied with search request

It provides a default value for url: https://dev.virtualearth.net/

Example

{
  "id": "search-provider/bing-maps",
  "type": "bing-maps-search-provider",
  "name": "translate#viewModels.searchLocations",
  "url": "https://dev.virtualearth.net/",
  "flightDurationSeconds": 1.5,
  "minCharacters": 5,
  "isOpen": true
},

CesiumIonSearchProvider

type: cesium-ion-search-provider

CesiumIon search provider is based on CesiumIon geocoding API provided by Cesium. To enable it it is necessary to add appropriate cesium API key as config parameter.

Name Required Type Default Description
key no string configParameters.cesiumIonAccessToken The CesiumIon key.

It provides a default value for url: https://api.cesium.com/v1/geocode/search/

Example

{
  "id": "search-provider/cesium-ion",
  "type": "cesium-ion-search-provider",
  "name": "translate#viewModels.searchLocations",
  "url": "https://api.cesium.com/v1/geocode/search/",
  "flightDurationSeconds": 1.5,
  "minCharacters": 5,
  "isOpen": true
},

AustralianGazetteerSearchProvider

type: australian-gazetteer-search-provider

Australian gazzetteer search provider is based on web feature service that uses an official place names of Australia. It is based on WebFeatureServiceProvider. It can be configured using following options

Name Required Type Default Description
searchPropertyName yes string undefined Which property to look for the search text in
searchPropertyTypeName yes string undefined Type of the properties to search

Example

{
    "id": "search-provider/australian-gazetteer",
    "type": "australian-gazetteer-search-provider",
    "name": "translate#viewModels.searchPlaceNames",
    "url": "http://services.ga.gov.au/gis/services/Australian_Gazetteer/MapServer/WFSServer",
    "searchPropertyName": "Australian_Gazetteer:NameU",
    "searchPropertyTypeName": "Australian_Gazetteer:Gazetteer_of_Australia",
    "flightDurationSeconds": 1.5,
    "minCharacters": 3,
    "recommendedListLength": 3,
    "isOpen": false
}

Implementing new location search provider

Implementing new location search provider is similar to implementing new CatalogItems and CatalogGroups. Each of them should be based on the usage of one of the mixins

  • LocationSearchProviderMixin - should be used for API based location search providers. Example of such search provider is BingMapSearchProvider.
  • WebFeatureServiceSearchProviderMixin - should be used for location search providers that will rely on data provided by WebFeatureService. Example of such search provider is AustralianGazetteerSearchProvider.

Each new SearchProvider should be registered inside registerSearchProvider so they can be properly upserted from json definition provider in config file.