Archive 1.x:How to Search

There are generally two search options provided on an OSF portal hosted by Drupal. The first is the standard Drupal site search, not discussed further here. The second option is to search using the OSF-Drupal search option. This is a special kind of structured search, with results a bit different than perhaps you have seen before.

Search Syntax
When searching, you may choose these operators or syntax to add to your keywords, for example:


 * park OR city -- provides the most results
 * park AND city -- both terms must be present; fewer results
 * park city (no quotes) -- both terms must be present, and within 5 words of one another; still fewer results, or
 * "park city" -- exact phrase in quotes, with the fewest results.

See further the Lucene search engine syntax specification.

Search Results
Upon executing your search, you will see a slightly different results display than what you may be used to, with many filtering and other structured results options:



Some of the notable things in this display, working from top to bottom, are:


 * The results display is paginated when there are more than 10 results
 * Under the tabs, you may further restrict or filter your results by dataset, kind of thing, or attribute; you may also export results
 * If no restrictions (filters) are checked, all results are shown; once you check a restriction, filters then apply
 * You may search again, including within the current results set
 * Your search keywords are highlighted in the results
 * Results are in the form of "records" with the structured attributes of each record displayed below a standard description or snippet
 * The source on each result indicates the dataset it comes from.

For more details on working with these structured results, see How to Browse Datasets.