Make the Advanced Search case insensitive

[tlammer]

Requested by Nebraska they would like to be able to search on a term like "femur" and get back records with both "Femur" and "femur" in the field. I cannot think of any use cases where having case sensitivity would be necessary and not having it would make it considerably easier.

[mcruz-umich]

UMich would like this as well.

[specifysoftware]

This issue has been mentioned on Specify Community Forum. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.specifysoftware.org/t/make-advanced-search-mode-in-webportal-case-insensitive/1233/2

[grantfitzsimmons]

Oranim College of Education would like this as well

[grantfitzsimmons]

Requested by KU Mammals as well

[grantfitzsimmons]

Requested By PRI Paleo as well

[grantfitzsimmons]

Requested by Paul Larson at FWRI as well

[grantfitzsimmons]

This was one of the main topics of our Technical Advisory Committee in July this year.

This has now been requested by:

• University of Michigan (Founding member)
• University of Florida (Founding member)
• University of Colorado Boulder
• University of Nebraska
• Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute
• Oranim College of Education
• Paleontological Research Institution
• KU Mammals

[grantfitzsimmons]

Requested by UWFC

[grantfitzsimmons]

After asking FLMNH about case-sensitivity, they had the following to say:

Yes, all our collections prefer case-insensitive searching and I believe all our portals are currently set that way. We alter the string field type to text_gen_sort_hypen in the solr schema with a bash script. Attached is a copy. If I recall correctly, we discussed the problem with Tim Noble back when the portals initially became case sensitive and he suggested we change the field type. The bash script was our solution.

webportal-rebuild.sh.txt

[grantfitzsimmons]

In the webportal the express search field appears to be case insensitive, while the fields using the advanced search option seems to be case sensitive. The attached screenshots show searches for “woot” (all lower case) using the two different search options. If this isn’t a bug, it is unnecessarily confusing to the user.

It would be best for all searches in the webportal to be case insensitive. Also diacriticals should be ignored using both the express and advanced search options.

Requested by: New Mexico State University Herbaria