Search for Objects in DaRIS Web Portal

Owned by Andy Tseng
Mar 21, 2024
4 min read

1. How it works

The query interface is relatively complex and so it's useful to understand how it's put together. However, you can also just jump to the next section and have a go.

1.1 Data Model and Framework

DaRIS structures data via a Data Model, and drives all of its processes by the data model. If the data model (more accurately, the deployment of the data model) does not know about something, the portal generally can’t present it.

The search interface is driven by the data model. So therefore it has to reflect (in some way) the  layers of Project -> Subject -> ExMethod -> Study -> DataSet. Because meta-data are distributed over  these objects, queries must also sometimes be distributed over those objects. For example, find first the subjects with 3 arms and false teeth, and then find their DICOM data sets for which the date of acquisition (or ingestion) was in a given range.

It must also be remembered that DaRIS is a framework - that framework defines some fixed meta-data (e.g. that all objects have names and descriptions). The framework also requires you to generate Method objects and to optionally create meta-data that provides context for your research (DaRIS can’t ‘know' what it is, it has to ‘discover’ it). These are domain-specific packages that are deployed with DaRIS (by the administrator).

The search interface must also contend with this : meta-data may be fixed framework meta-data (which it ‘knows’ about), or be provided by your domain-specific layer, which it must ‘discover’ via the  data-model driven service interfaces.  Further, DaRIS offers your the flexibility to deploy totally different meta-data from Project to project.

The search interface does essentially reflect these concepts to you and so you need some understanding of how the system is put together to successfully negotiate it.

The interface presents different filter types on the right that you drag to the left and then configure. At this time, all filters are restricted to the context of a specific project (i.e. there is no multi-project filter; this restriction will be lifted at some point when Mediaflux allows us to).

When you specify the specific meta-data elements that you wish to query they come in the categories:

  • Framework : fixed meta-data that the DaRIS framework provides. This includes things like object names and descriptions
  • Domain : this is the meta-data that has been configured for your domain-specific package and that is relevant to your specific project
  • DICOM : there is also some fixed DICOM meta-data on Study and DataSet objects

2. Quick start

  1. Click Search button on the top menu bar, then select “Search...” or select “Search...” in the context menu of the object (tree) navigator. It will bring up the search user interface window.
  2. Inside the search UI, there are list of query/search filters in the “Filter Selector” column (right) of the window, which can be selected from. Select and drag the filters from the right column to the left column, which is the main search composition area, to compose your query. You can add more than one filters to compose your query. Filters can be chained together with and/or logic operators.
  3. Fill in the required fields for each filter you have selected. The “Search” button will be enabled.
  4. Click the “Search” button to perform the search.
  5. The search result will be displayed in a new window.
  6. In the search result window, you will be able to see the details of the each individual object by click “View” button then select “Show detail”.
  7. You can “Export” the results to XML format or a spreadsheet in .csv format.
  8. You can “Download” the results by adding them into shopping-cart.

3. Filters


  • In the “Filter selector” panel, we have a list of filters can be chosen from. (We can develop and add new filters to the list if the existing filters are not sufficient.)
  • Composite Filter: You can use composite filter to compose nested filters (Braces in the query). If you want to compose a query in the form of (A or B) and C, you can first add Composite filter: D and Filter C, and Composite Filter D contains Filter A and Filter B.
  • Metadata Filter: lets you search by object metadata(values).
  • Text Filter: lets you search by arbitrary text in the object metadata.
  • Two step filtering - for example, first find all Subjects with specific meta-data (e.g. name) and then find all the child DataSets of those Subjects that have specific meta-data
  • First drag the asset/cid filter to the left.
    • Select the contained by operator.
    • Click the Edit button and create the filter to find the Subjects with the meta-data of interest
    • The output of this filter is a list of citable IDs for the found Subjects. We will supply these to the next (Study) filter
  • Drag the meta filter to the left
      • Populate the filter for DataSets objects with the meta-data of interest
  • The AND-ing of these two filters (the default) will result in the desired DataSets

4. Query options

  • In the Options tab, you can set the size of the returned result set.
  • You can add xpaths to the metadata elements so that the returned result set will include their values.
  • You can add xpaths to the metadata elements to be the sorting keys.

5. Query results

  • In the query result window, you can:
    1. view the detail of the each individual object in the search result set. (“View” -> “Show Detail”)
    2. export results to csv spreadsheet
    3. exprot results to XML file
    4. download the results by adding them to shopping-carts.