Blank or Wildcard Search for Course by Instructor Fails

[Beth Willis]

EG 3-8-0

When searching for courses in the OPAC, a BLANK or wildcard (*) search returns a list of results if the search is performed using either the Course Name or Course Number index. A BLANK or wildcard (*) search of the Instructor index, however, returns no results. An Instructor search should work the same as the Course Name and Course Number searches.

Note: See related LP bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1913340

[Jennifer Pringle (jpringle-u)]

On 3.8.0 I can replicate what Beth sees with a BLANK search.

When I try to do a wildcard search I get an internal server error for Course Name or Course Number. A wildcard search for Instructor returns no results (but does not give me an internal server error).

[Jane Sandberg (sandbergja)]

The top two commits on this branch should resolve this issue: user/sandbergja/lp1968754_instructor_search

It also includes a handful of tests to hopefully prevent some regressions in this feature.

[Garry Collum (gcollum)]

In testing the patches. A search of just a wild card in the instructor field does return all results, but if I add the wildcard character to a string (d*) to search for courses with instructors that start with 'd', no results are returned.

The course name and course number searches using 'contains' seem to truncate the search. For example, if the course is Art History, with a course number Art 100, a search for 'ar' returns results. But a search for an instructor named 'Davis', is not retrieved using a search of 'da'.

[Terran McCanna (tmccanna)]

Removing pullrequest as per testing comment #3

[Jane Sandberg (sandbergja)]

I amended my second commit to handle instructor wildcard characters. Please note: the instructor wildcard only will work at the end of the string.

This is because it's implemented as a tsquery prefix wildcard search in postgres. If we wanted more fully featured wildcard searching for instructors, while retaining the ability to search names in any order (firstname lastname vs. lastname, firstname), we'd have to do some more extensive re-thinking, which I'd suggest is outside the scope of the original report.

[Beth Willis (willis-a)]

Testing notes:

-- I logged in to a BR1 workstation
-- I added users (Victor Hart, Jan Lindsey Copeland) to three courses assigning the "Instructor" role in each case
-- I searched courses by Instructor and found the following:

  -- Adding an asterisk (*) to the end of any search string correctly returns the expected courses.
  -- Including a space in the search term, for example, when searching the instructor’s full name (e.g. Victor Hart), resulted in an internal server error.

[Jane Sandberg (sandbergja)]

Oooh, good catch, Beth. Pushed a fix to the same branch (user/sandbergja/lp1968754_instructor_search)

[Beth Willis (willis-a)]

Jane, thanks for this fix. I can now search by instructor using a search string including one space (e.g. first name and last name). However, if the search includes multiple spaces (e.g. two-word first name and last name), the internal server error still appears.

[Jane Sandberg (sandbergja)]

Thanks for your careful testing, Beth! It's getting there. :-D I force-pushed a fix to that same branch. It's now the top three commits on user/sandbergja/lp1968754_instructor_search

[Steven Mayo (stmayo)]

Testing Notes:
   Created Courses instructed by Victor Hart, Cora Jones, Jan Lindsey Copeland
 -- Searching by instructor for 'Jan Lindsey Copeland' returned her single course correctly, saw no internal server error
 -- Searching for 'Cora' returned her single course
 -- Searching by instructor for 'C' returned no courses - I guess the search is looking for exact word matches
 -- Searching for 'C*' returned the Cora Jones and Jan Lindsey Copeland courses
 -- Searching for 'Lind' returned no courses
 -- Searching for 'Lindsey' returned the Jan Lindsey Copeland course
 -- Searching for 'V*' returned the Victor Hart course
 -- Searching for 'i*' returned no courses
 -- Searching for '*i*' returned no courses
 -- Searching for '*' returned all courses
 -- Searching by instructor for '**' returned all courses
 -- Searching for ' ' returned all courses
 -- Searching by instructor for ' ' returned all courses
 -- Searching by instructor for '!' returned no courses
 -- Searching by instructor for '?' returned no courses
 -- Searching by course name for '?' returned an internal server error. Different bug.
 -- Searching by instructor for '$' returned no courses. But it won't crash if someone named Ca$h Money teaches a course
 -- Searching by instructor for '{' returned no courses

Seems more resilient than the Course Name search at this point.

I have tested this code and consent to signing off on it with my name, Steven Mayo and my email address, <email address hidden>.

[Andrea Neiman (aneiman)]

Steven beat me to the signoff, but I also tested this & found it does the thing :) :)

I have tested this code and consent to signing off with my name, Andrea Buntz Neiman, and my email address <email address hidden>

[Michele Morgan (mmorgan)]

A huge improvement to course instructor searching!

Pushed to main, rel_3_11 and rel_3_10.

Thanks Jane, Steven and Andrea!