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ExB full-text search algorithm should consider a hyphen (-) character and other punctuation marks as splitters for individual words

539
2
10-27-2023 10:37 AM
Status: Open
To
by
Occasional Contributor

Many infrastructure management organizations use unique record identifiers that follow a pattern involving punctuation characters. For example:

  • ELEC-MH1234 for "electrical manhole #1234"
  • 01-WMH3218 for "site one, water manhole 3218"

The full-text search introduced to ExB with the Oct. 2023 update doesn't consider hyphens as a character that separates words. Therefore searching for "MH1234" or "WMH32" doesn't bring up any suggestions. It is not very user friendly to have to type out prefixes, and it is inconsistent with how ArcGIS Field Maps search behaves.

Beyond the infrastructure management industry, there are other more general cases to be made:

  • For place names: if you enter "Lake" in the Lake Erie area, wouldn't it be reasonable for a user to expect the city "Mentor-by-the-Lake, Ohio, USA" to be suggested?
  • For people names: if you search your space occupants for "Jones", wouldn't it be reasonable for a user to expect the person who's last name is "Smith-Jones" to be suggested?
2 Comments
RussRoberts
by Esri Notable Contributor
‎10-27-2023 11:26 AM

Are you using a hosted feature layer that has an index setup on the field you are searching? If it does the - should be treated as a separator and work with your example. This is your case working on a hosted feature layer with an full text index on the field working in Map Viewer and the JSAPI search widget. 

 

RussRoberts_0-1698431124261.png

 

To
by
‎10-27-2023 11:31 AM

Thank you for the reply. In my case it is *not* a hosted feature layer. It is a service from our on-premise ArcGIS Enterprise (Geodatabase + Server) that is used in ArcGIS Online as an item of type feature layer.

Good to know hosted feature layers work that way. I appreciate you pointing that out.