Allow advanced searching of multiple fields with a single control

[tumbledwyer]

🚀 Feature

Build a control to be used in advanced search that can take a type and a list of fields for it to search on.
e.g. Type = 'Name', Fields = ['bride.name', 'groom.name']

This would render exactly like a normal name field search (or date field etc) but would just search on multiple fields instead of just the one.

The type is used to render the fields, so there will need to be validation to check that the fields in the list are all of the correct type.

Current configuration:

fields: [
      field('residenceMember1.name', {
        conditionals: []
      }).exact(),
      field('residenceMember1.dateOfBirth', {
        conditionals: []
      }).exact()
    ]

Potential configuration:

fields: [
  {
    fieldId: 'my.multi.search',
    type: FieldType.NAME,
    configuration: { 
      type: 'fuzzy',
      searchFields: ['residenceMember1.name', 'residenceMember2.name', 'residenceMember3.name']
    }
  },
  {
    fieldId: 'my.multi.dob',
    type: FieldType.DATE,
    configuration: { 
      type: 'exact',
      searchFields: ['residenceMember1.dateOfBirth', 'residenceMember2.dateOfBirth', 'residenceMember3.dateOfBirth']
    }
  }  
]

Pitch

Currently, an advanced search field must be linked to a specific field id. i.e child.name.
Because of this, we can't search for any name in the declaration with a single search field.

Where this becomes particularly cumbersome is in the case of residence registration, where we have up to 30 residence members, each with their own field names. e.g. residenceMember1.name, residenceMember1.dob, residenceMember2.name, residenceMember2.dob etc

So to allow advance searching of residence members, we would need a separate control for every single member, up to 30.

Not only this UI bloat, but to search for a member, the user would have to know the order the members were saved. So if you didn't know they were saved as residenceMember5, you'd have to search in all 30 members to try to find the member.

Pre-condition

The field would be configured in Advanced Search in the country specific config.

Standard flow

The user would just see one field in the UI, like Bridal Party or Residence Member as per the above examples.
Then searching would check all relevant fields and return matches as per the normal advanced search functionality.

Variations/Exceptions

A type agnostic text input could be used, like the standard search.

[rikukissa]

@tumbledwyer proposed solution looks good. The current implementation of the search field constructor is here.

The original idea was just that you're defining form fields "from scratch" just as you are doing in the form BUT with the exception that if you use an id already specified as part of the form, then it inherits type and possible other properties from there

{
  fieldId: 'child.firstname',
  // implicitly gets type: TEXT from child.firstname
  configuration: { 
    type: 'fuzzy' as const // Indicates how to search ES but can also affect which UI input is show to user. `child.age` could for instance be a plain number input or a range selector
  }
}

to this it's fairly easy to expand the multifield search just like you've done here

{
  fieldId: 'my.multi.search',
  type: FieldType.TEXT,
  configuration: { 
    type: 'fuzzy' as const,
    searchFields: ['child.firstname', 'child.nickname']
  }
}

I would just use plain objects like this and not implement a constructor function for this so that it's aligned with field definition API. field('child.firstname') should really only be used for referring to a field, which in this case is fine as well, but even the way we do field('child.firstname', { <options> }) is in my opinion against this and should instead use the object literal format

[anninawersun]

@ThierryMyshepherd to share options with Abdikani to decide on technical approach and implications.
Further discussion needed on "group" function. NB. data migration would be required.

[makelicious]

@tumbledwyer are you working on this?

[tumbledwyer]

@tumbledwyer are you working on this?

@makelicious Yes I am currently