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IATI Datastore

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Datastore Search

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User Guide

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    • Example Queries
  • Advanced Search
  • Frequently Asked Questions

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IATI Datastore: Documentation
  1. IATI Datastore: Documentation
  2. Simple Search

Simple Search#

The home page of Datastore Search contains the “Simple Search” bar. This performs a text search on every narrative element within IATI activity data.

For a summary of all elements in the standard, please see the Activity Standard Summary Table.

Search operators#

Simple search includes search operators; special commands that make your search more precise. These operators and examples of their use are documented below:

Search operator

Function

Example

?

Wildcard, representing one character.

latin? returns results including latino and latina.

*

Wildcard, representing any number of characters.

latin* returns results including latin, latino, latina, latinize, etc.

“ ”

An exact match search.

“inter-agency” searches for inter-agency exactly.

Without quotes, inter-agency would return matches to inter and agency.

AND

Boolean, requires both terms to be present.

&& can be used in place of AND.

Congo AND Democratic returns results that contain both the terms Congo, and Democratic.

NOT

Boolean, requires that the following term is not present.

! or - can be used in place of NOT.

Congo NOT Democratic returns results that contain Congo but do not contain Democratic.

OR

Boolean, requires that at least one of the terms is present.

|| can be used in place of OR.

Covid OR vaccine returns results containing Covid, vaccine, or both.

+

Boolean, requires that a term must be present.

foreign domestic +aid returns results that contain foreign or domestic, and must include aid.

~

Fuzzy search, finds similar results. Can be modified with a number (0,1, or 2) to limit the number of edits.

OR

roam~1 returns road, roma, etc.

~

Proximity search, requires that provided terms are found separated by a maximum count of words.

Note: quote marks must be used for the search phrase.

“protection rights” ~20 returns results that contain protection and rights, within 20 words of each other.

^

Term boosting operator, boosts the relevancy of the term.

covid^4 vaccine health doctor returns results that match any of the four terms. Results containing covid will be higher ranked.

()

Grouping, for use with other search operators

(Congo AND Democratic) OR ( Covid AND vaccine) combines two AND searches.

Downloading Results#

You can download the results of your search in different levels of detail and formats.

Levels:
  • Activity level: each row in the data represents one activity. This can contain many transactions and budgets.

  • Transaction level: each row represents one transaction. Activity level information is repeated for each transaction.

  • Budget level: each row represents one budget. Activity level information is repeated for each budget.

Formats:
  • XML: A valid IATI standard XML file containing all the results from your search. This format can only describe activity-level data.

  • JSON: A flattened Javascript representation of your search results.

  • CSV: A flattened, comma separated export of your search results. Fields with multiple values are combined into a comma separated list. To note: in this format, cell lengths can exceed the Microsoft Excel limit of 32,767 characters.

  • EXCEL: A flattened, comma separated export of your search results, modified to be compatible with Microsoft Excel. Fields with multiple values are combined into a pipe (|) separated list. Cell values longer than 32,767 characters are truncated to 32,700 characters.

Advanced Search#

If you want to expand a simple search to include non narrative elements, click the “Advanced” button on the results page. This will open the advanced search menu, auto-populated with your existing search. See the Advanced Search section of the User Guide for more information.

Additional Information

Created using Sphinx 8.1.3.

Source code at GitHub.

Documentation licensed under CC BY 4.0.

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