[API] Set up "Dynamic" Search for `api/v1/resources/`

[BethanyG]

Currently, api/v1/resources/ uses filters.SearchFilter as its filter_backend. This particular filter does a search on all fields for the requested parameters, which is not granular enough for our search needs.

As in this article: https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-make-search-fields-dynamic-in-django-rest-framework-72922bfa1543? we need to make this api endpoint more dynamically searchable by implementing a custom filter_backend.

[BethanyG]

There is an additional twist for this now that we are using a generic relation for Tags through taggit.

Generic Relations

Generic Relations Tutorial

Django-filter (not sure this will help - needs more investigation)

DRF Search Filter

Real Python on Polymorphism in Django & Generic Keys

[BethanyG]

Going to try and take a shot at this at some point soon, but would welcome some collaborators.

[billglover]

Am I right in understanding that the aim of this is to allow the user to specify which fields they'd like their search query matched against as part of the search request and that without this the default is to search all fields?

[BethanyG]

That is correct.

The current implementation is a "default" implementation of the DRF Filter Backend, which really does nothing more than filter the all resources queryset() down to the terms "searched on" ...if that makes sense.

So searching is a simple "includes" match against the content in all fields in the resources model.

The twist is that although tags are returned as part of the resources view..they're not actually part of the resources model, and so are not included in this "default" search.

Implementing dynamic search would attempt to do two things:

1. Allow users to specify which fields they'd match against
2. Attempt to include tags as part of that search

But (as noted in issue #73) number 2 might need to be part of an overall strategy for a tagging endpoint.

[BethanyG]

Correction. We are using the DRF SearchFilter Backend - but functionally, it more or less has the same effect. Yes - we can control which fields the search runs against, but it is not a very intelligent search - and we cannot currently include tags as part of the search fields.