Describe Symbiota MapServer parameterized search

[mjy]

I.e. what are the parameter names the geoJSON returning form.

[bdbrandt]

The DwC parameters that are relied on as query parameters in thee spatial module include: decimalLatitude, decimalLongitude, country, stateProvince, county, municipality, locality, year, month, day, eventDate, recordedBy, recordNumber, catalogNumber, and otherCatalogNumbers.

In addition to these, there is the capacity to limit record returns by a collection, or set of collections, within the portal. The parameter used for this is the Symbiota-specific field collid which is the primary key for the collections table in the database. This parameter could be easily reconfigured to be the concatenation of the DwC fields institutionCode and collectionCode as both are maintained in Symbiota as well. Additionally, the parameters used for specifying taxonomic criteria rely on Symbiota-specific fields as well. Within Symbiota, there is the capacity to track parent-child relationships between taxa as well as acceptance relationships. These are both done by referencing the primary key (tid) for taxa within the main taxa table. So Symbiota-specific fields include tid, parenttid, and tidaccepted, but these can supplanted by their equivalences in universal identifiers for the taxa. There is also the Symbiota-specific field of sciname used for querying name parameters. This field is the equivalent of the DwC field scientificName, but without the authorship. So it could be replaced with a concatenation of genus, specificEpithet, and infraspecificEpithet in DwC. In addition the DwC family and taxonRank fields are also used. Finally, there are also the Symbiota-specific localitySecurity and localitySecurityReason fields which are designed to flag and provide explanation for records that have sensitive information regarding the locality.

The GeoJSON output that the spatial module is developed to accept includes the DwC fields: catalogNumber, otherCatalogNumbers, family, scientificNameAuthorship, identifiedBy, dateIdentified, typeStatus, recordedBy, recordNumber, eventDate, year, month, day, habitat, associatedTaxa, country, StateProvince, county, municipality, minimumElevationInMeters, maximumElevationInMeters, InstitutionCode, CollectionCode, and family. There are also the following Symbiota-specific fields that are included, but could be excluded: sciname, tidinterpreted, displayDate, cultivationStatus, localitySecurity, localitySecurityReason, labelProject, CollType, CollectionName, and thumbnailurl. These Symbiota-specific fields can easily be filtered out of the return, but the spatial module is also designed to ignore them if they are not included.

Next step will be to setup a stand-alone version of the spatial module which is limited to DwC-specifc fields both in query parameters and those returned.

Does TW contain equivalences of any of the Symbiota-specifc fields listed above?

[mjy]

@tuckerjd can you please create google Sheet, or table inline here, and to the best of your ability match TW attributes (draw primarily from CollectionObject, CollectingEvent, Georeference and DwcOccurence) to those listed by @bdbrandt?

[TuckerJD]

• decimalLatitude: When the CollectingEvent is created with with_verbatim_data_georeference set to true, the verbatim_latitude is used (along with verbatim_longitude) to generate a Georeference::VerbatimData object from this information, (which is then assigned to the 'CollectingEvent'). This can also be done at any later time using generate_verbatim_data_georeference. -- CollectingEvent.verbatim_latitude
• decimalLongitude: See decimalLatitude, above. -- CollectingEvent.verbatim_longitude
• country: Can be used for CollectingEvent.geographic_area_id using GeographicArea.where(name: "#{country}.first, but watch out for exact match.
• stateProvince: Can be used for CollectingEvent.geographic_area_id using GeographicArea.where(name: "#{country}.first, but watch out for exact match.
• county: Can be used for CollectingEvent.geographic_area_id using GeographicArea.where(name: "#{country}.first, but watch out for multiple matches, and it can be fairly complicated to insure that you have found the one which is located in the specified stateProvince.
• municipality: By itself, there really is nowhere to put this information, but it might be aggregated with country, stateProvince, and county, and placed in CollectingEvent.verbatim_locality, if it is otherwise blank.
• locality: Can be used directly for CollectingEvent.verbatim_locality.
• year: Can be used directly for CollectingEvent.start_date_year.
• month: Can be used directly for CollectingEvent.start_date_month.
• day: Can be used directly for CollectingEvent.start_date_day.
• eventDate: Depending on date format, may be parse-able using Utilities::Dates.hunt_dates(eventDate)). and used for CollectingEvent.start_date_year, CollectingEvent.start_date_month, and CollectingEvent.start_date_day. This utility is quite complicated, but can decode many different date formats.
• recordedBy
• recordNumber
• catalogNumber
• otherCatalogNumbers