Datastore Search
User Guide
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.