"no items to show" message when filter authors or subjects on browse page

[Árpád Magyar]

Dear All,

We have some search issues on the browse page using "search the repository' search bar to filter the results.

Using the menu 'All of Dspace' > by Subject > 'Search the repository', only lowercase, truncated, and unaccented subject terms are displayed, with broken links (with the message 'no items to show')

E.g.:

Adriai-tenger > adriaiteng

adatfeldolgozás > adatfeldolgoza

The same issue occurs when searching for authors on the browsing page. E.g.:

Asztalos István > asztalo 

 Using the "Search the repository" search bar on the pages 'browsing by issue date' and 'by title' works fine.

Could this be an indexing issue?

The links in the list of authors and subject terms work fine. The issue only occurs when we filter using the top search bar on the browsing pages.

Dspace version: 8.0 (updated from 7.2) Java version: 17.0.14

Could you please help solve this issue? Any idea would be appreciated.

Thanks so much,

Arpad

[Soukaïna Mahboub Mehboub]

Hi, did you manage to fix this? I have the same issue in 7.6 version. 

El dia dissabte, 10 de maig del 2025 a les 23:15:37 UTC+2, Árpád Magyar va escriure:

[Soukaïna Mahboub Mehboub]

I just checked right now version 8, on demo websitem and it has the same issue. 






But if you search his name as "Karolien De Wael" no results are given:

El dia dissabte, 10 de maig del 2025 a les 23:15:37 UTC+2, Árpád Magyar va escriure:

Dear All,

[DSpace Technical Support]

Hi,

I believe this may be a misunderstanding on how the "Browse by Author" pages work in DSpace.

When you visit the Browse By Author page in DSpace, you'll see all the Authors in the system listed alphabetically by surname (last name).  This can be seen on the demo site: https://demo.dspace.org/browse/author

The "Browse/Search" box on that page notes specifically that you can "Filter results by typing the first few letters".  It is NOT a normal search box, but rather allows you to immediately filter that list of all Authors down to ones whose surname begins with certain letters.

However, the key point is that box is expecting you to type the author's surname (last name) first , because that is how the authors are listed in that "Browse by Author" page.

So, on the demo site, you can see that if you type in "De" or "De Wael" you will filter that list of authors to only those whose surname starts with that text.

Therefore, typing "De Wael" in that box will return two results:  "De Wael, K" and "De Wael, Karolien"  See on the demo site: https://demo.dspace.org/browse/author?bbm.page=1&startsWith=De%20Wael

However, if you instead type "Karolien", you will receive *no results* because no authors in the system have a surname of "Karolien"  See on the demo site: https://demo.dspace.org/browse/author?bbm.page=1&startsWith=Karolien

Keep in mind, the global search page will act differently however.  If you type "Karolien De Wael" in the global search (in the header or homepage or search page), then you will get results related to that author.  For example, on the demo site: https://demo.dspace.org/search?query=Karolien%20De%20Wael&spc.page=1

This is expected behavior in DSpace because the "Browse by Author" page only searches for author names (surname first) that start with that text.   But, the global search page will search across the entire system for anything that matches.

I hope that helps to better explain the behavior you are seeing.

Tim

[Árpád Magyar]

Hello Tim,

That's right, this is the proper behaviour, there are no results because author names are unified (starting with last names), and there is no author name starting with "Kar..."

We are facing a completely different issue. As I wrote in the post, it seems that the subject terms and author names are stored in the wrong format in the browse indexes.

Let me show you some examples:

subject term in metadata (dc.subject field): Adriai-tenger
subject term after filter results: adriaiteng

This wrong form of the subject term shows in the link, therefore, DSpace could not find the linked content:

https://digitalia.csfk.org/browse/subject?value=adriaiteng&bbm.return=1

The proper link should be: https://digitalia.csfk.org/browse/subject?value=Adriai-tenger&bbm.return=1 (this link works just fine!)

author name: Allodi, Pietro
filtered result after type "all" in the "Browse/Search" box: allodi

broken link: https://digitalia.csfk.org/browse/author?value=allodi&bbm.return=1

the correct link would be: https://digitalia.csfk.org/browse/author?value=Allodi, Pietro&bbm.return=1 (works fine)

Global search (in the header or homepage) works perfect!

Any idea to fix this issue?

(Our database is not available to the public yet, only for internal use.)

Thanks,

Arpad

[DSpace Technical Support]

Hi Arpad,

Considering this behavior doesn't occur on our demo site (https://demo.dspace.org), which is running the latest 8.x code, it does sound like it could be a possible indexing or configuration issue on your end.  If it was a bug in DSpace, it'd be more likely to appear (or be reproducible) on our demo site as well.

Have you tried a full reindex of everything?  "./dspace index-discovery -b"

I'd recommend trying that, and perhaps also paying close attention to the backend logs *during* the indexing process to see if you are encountering a large number of errors.  If so, those might be clues as to what is going on.

If you can find a way to reproduce this issue on our demo site, that might also provide more clues. You are welcome to even add some test content similar to your own content, if you think it could be somehow specific to your content/data.

I don't have any other ideas, but it does sound like an indexing issue.  Such an indexing issue might be caused by a configuration problem, or possibly a local customization (if you've made any), or maybe even something went wrong in upgrading/migrating your configurations or customizations from DSpace 7 to DSpace 8.

Tim

[alex buckley]

Hi Arpad,

I have a DSpace instance (running 7.6.3) that has the same browse author behaviour that you are describing. Could you please let me know if you have discovered the cause of this (including if it was an indexing issue)?

Thanks so much,

Alex

[Árpád Magyar]

Hello Alex,

We are still working with our IT team to solve the problem, and we do not currently have a solution. I will let you know when we resolve the issue.

Cheers,

Arpad

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[Qing Zou]

Hi,

I believe this has been resolved. 

https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/10519/commits/8e88547932c9c0260c50307d7c90657182de45af

If you apply the changes to the two files, the browse function should be working fine.

Best,

Jason

Dr. Qing (Jason) Zou, MLIS, PhD, 

Head, Digital Initiatives
Lakehead University Library

tel: (807) 343-8010 ext. 8251

email: qz...@lakeheadu.ca

website: www.lakeheadu.ca

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dspace-tech/CAO0SQ5B%2BuQjcgU2HDMgdY6G4%3DaqG61xZXi0A3DnwETAgYvdBLw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Toni Prieto]

Hi,

I was investigating this issue and I think Jason is right — this modification could potentially fix the problem, even though it was originally meant to address a different issue.

However, I believe the main problem is that some changes were made to the schema.xml file of the Solr search core during the upgrade from version 7.2 to 8.0, and it's possible that this update hasn't been applied to the Solr instance you're currently using. I would also check that Solr is using the correct core definitions corresponding to the version you're running.

Specifically, I think you might be missing this line in the schema.xml you're using, which could explain the issue:

https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/blob/main/dspace/solr/search/conf/schema.xml#L311

Best regards,

Toni

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dspace-tech/CACpaJt7Q1fmgeysJq2WXf2FKG-oEhtppfyB%2B32ZmR86E3HThFA%40mail.gmail.com.

-- 

Toni Prieto
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Tel.: 93 405 42 49

[alex buckley]

Hi all, 

Thanks for your responses, appreciate it!

We kindly got assistance from Adam Doan who encountered this problem previously too.

The fix for us was to update the Solr search schema, then run a full re-index.

Assuming you don't have any customisations in your /var/solr/data/search directory (we did not) you can do:

rm -R /var/solr/data/search

cp -R [dspace]/solr/search /var/solr/data/search

[solr]/bin/solr restart

[dspace]/bin/dspace index-discovery -b

Otherwise run:

cp [dspace]/solr/search/conf/schema.xml /var/solr/data/search/conf/

[solr]/bin/solr restart

[dspace]/bin/dspace index-discovery -b

I hope this helps.

Thanks,

Alex