topic Re: Search widget incorrectly showing "No search results" prior to pressing Enter in ArcGIS Experience Builder Questions

Search widget incorrectly showing "No search results" prior to pressing Enter

COwen — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 02:28:40 GMT

Hello there,

I'm using the Search widget for two feature layers in an Experience Builder application. As shown below, I'm searching within 5 fields for this particular feature layer. I can get search results without pressing Enter for some of the fields but for others I get "No search results" and have to press Enter to see the results. Why might this be the case? There are differences between them (e.g. max length, whether null values are allowed) but I can't imagine it's related to these differences.

Also, for all of the 5 fields, I get "No search results" for text that is not at the beginning of the string and have to press Enter to see the results. Is there a way to resolve this, even if this means removing all search results before pressing Enter?

Many thanks

Re: Search widget incorrectly showing "No search results" prior to pressing Enter

ShengdiZhang — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 02:50:30 GMT

Hi @COwen ,

Due to performance issues, different search methods are used to get search suggestions and search results. Search suggestions use "Start with" or full-text index, while search results use "Contain".

There is currently an issue in our repo to remove "no results" from search suggestions.

Regards,

Shengdi

Re: Search widget incorrectly showing "No search results" prior to pressing Enter

COwen — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 04:21:35 GMT

Hi @ShengdiZhang,

Thanks so much for your reply. That is very useful to know.

What would be your explanation for why some fields don't get search suggestions (using "Start with" or full-text index) while others do?

Many thanks,

Caitlin

Re: Search widget incorrectly showing "No search results" prior to pressing Enter

TimWestern — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 12:18:55 GMT

I hadn't thought about optimization happening behind the scenes impacting, but this matches what I would have thought. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Search widget incorrectly showing "No search results" prior to pressing Enter

TimWestern — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 12:23:56 GMT

As a dev I have seen this happen in lots of different ways. I think its important to remember as you type into search, that what you get are 'suggestions' and not always 'accurate results'.

Case in point, I was looking for a property on a street the other day and I thought it was on 709 5th St SW
Then I noticed there was a SE, NE, and NW and also a 709 5th Ave version as well. I clicked around and realized, that it was giving me suggestions based on common lookup queries, not necessarily based on some index of the layer data as it was presented. Because when I clicked on each of them I noticed that I had 2 different houses, w 4 suggestions in the search box, but only 1 when clicked, showed the actual property address.

I think ArcGIS has the potential for addresses for example along lines, and will place them where they might be expected to appear even if there is no mapped property at that location.

This is just one illustration that I've seen recently that explains some of this.

The one thing I will add, is depending on how fresh your computer/browser session is, you might not get many suggestions at all, because that lookup has not had many searches done in your session. The browsers, like to suggest or autocomplete at times when it sees what looks like form fields, so it may not be the widget doing that, but the browser. That's another thing to keep in mind.

Re: Search widget incorrectly showing "No search results" prior to pressing Enter

COwen — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 21:31:44 GMT

Hi @TimWestern,

Thanks so much for your response. That gives much more context for what's happening with search suggestions.

Thanks again,

Caitlin

Re: Search widget incorrectly showing "No search results" prior to pressing Enter

RebeccaWatson1 — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 08:36:33 GMT

Hello

Have there been any developments on this issue? I am using Experience Builder in an enterprise Portal 11.4 and getting similar problems which I believe to be related but my results do not immediately work after pressing enter. Here's what is happening...

I type in a search term that definitely exists in my data in multiple features.

I get a suggested list and if I click on any of these suggestions I get "No results found for..."

If I immediately click Enter after typing the search term I also get "No results found for..."

If I then delete the last letter in my search term the list refreshes and clicking on any of the results immediately zooms and pans to the result as expected.

This behaviour is confusing for our users who think that there are no results when there are. Have I got the widget set up wrong or is this a bug?

Many thanks for your input

Re: Search widget incorrectly showing "No search results" prior to pressing Enter

TimWestern — Fri, 09 May 2025 17:15:27 GMT

I would be interested to hear more on this also.

As a software developer, the asynchronous nature of search, suggestions and widgets, makes me think what may be happening is this

Begin entering criteria for search (Widget starts generating suggestions)
Click on a suggestion and it starts a new search (Before it completes the previous search stops generating the 'no results found for message')
Then a few moments later you may get actual results.

I can't help feel this is an artifact of the state model in the search widget in EXB.

The click go nowhere, make small change click again then goes is also likely similar in what its doing.

Re: Search widget incorrectly showing "No search results" prior to pressing Enter

AlexHogan — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 01:23:25 GMT

Hi @RebeccaWatson1 ,

Did you every find the cause of this issue, a client is experiencing a similar issue,

If not, I will update you with the outcome,

Thanks
Alex

Re: Search widget incorrectly showing "No search results" prior to pressing Enter

AlexHogan — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 02:20:01 GMT

Hi @RebeccaWatson1

I think if you enable the setting 'Enable filtering for layer source search' this issue should not occur

Re: Search widget incorrectly showing "No search results" prior to pressing Enter

RebeccaWatson1 — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 13:31:29 GMT

Many thanks Alex - that has improved the functioning of the widget greatly. Very helpful 😊

Re: Search widget incorrectly showing "No search results" prior to pressing Enter

COwen — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 01:27:29 GMT

Hi Alex,

Thanks so much for letting us know - really useful!

Kind regards, Caitlin

Re: Search widget incorrectly showing "No search results" prior to pressing Enter

SStopyak_BruceHarris — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 11:15:20 GMT

I've covered this topic with ESRI Support for hours (with the Query widget); documenting, making demonstration videos, screenshares, data shares...and ended up without resolution. Suggestions work fine for a single unbroken string like a parcel number but addresses don't work. I suspect this could be a query performance-driven problem because it feels like it might be more prevalent with larger datasets. The main data value pattern that is problematic is <number><space><alphanumeric> which is the case for almost any address. The only real workaround I have found is to use a "contains" search instead of suggestions for unique values. I fully disagree with the assertion that the suggestions that come up don't need to work correctly, because they are just suggestions. That is not the expected behavior. No user is going to see it that way.

Note for ESRI Devs: I'm not a javascript developer by trade, but if the search and query are using regex expressions, maybe the expressions aren't accounting for this number space alphanumeric pattern correctly? Conversely, if it is a pure SQL expression, maybe that query formatting needs a look.