Search Values of Array in "One Go"

[Alex Tweedly]

I'm not going to disagree with the other replies ....

Plan A.   use your database

Plan B.   create an in-memory SQLite database.

Plan C. use an array, kind of like you are doing.

And *only* if there are good reasons for not doing Plans A or B, then :

C1.  Instead of

repeat for each key x in aPlaylist
        repeat for each key y in aPlayList[x]
    

do

repeat for each key x in aPlaylist
        repeat for each element ey in aPlayList[x]

Also, instead of
     put aPlayList[x] into aFilteredPlayList[z]

do
     put x into aFilteredPlayListIndex[z]
(there's no need to replicate all the data when the array will continue to exist, just keep the indices you want).


C2. Did you really mean "check *all* columns in the array" ?
Should it not be "check all the 'properties' columns" ?
If so - that's another reason to use a/the database :-)

C3. Create an 'allproperties' column ?
There's probably a fast/easy way to do that either in the database, or as you extract from it - but a database expert would have to tell us how to do that.

Alternatively, when you extract, just do

repeat for each key x in aPlayList
   repeat for each item y in thePropertyColumns
       put aPlayList[x][y] & SPACE after aPlayList[x]["allproperties"]
   end repeat
end repeat

or, delay this until first search :

repeat for each key x in aPlayList
    if aPlayList[x]["allproperties"] is empty then
       repeat for each item y in thePropertyColumns
           put aPlayList[x][y] & SPACE after aPlayList[x]["allproperties"]
       end repeat
       if aPlayList[x]["allproperties"] is empty then -- so that subsequent searches never rebuild this
         put SPACE into aPlayList[x]["allproperties"]
       end if
    end if
    if aPlayList[x]["allproperties"] contains pFilterPattern then
      put x & CR after z
    end if
end repeat

  
Alex.


On 23/08/2017 16:24, Sannyasin Brahmanathaswami via use-livecode wrote:
> We use these arrays with media metadata that is extracted from our database of media metadata. The dbase was originally designed for lots of columns so that "there is nothing we cannot know about a media item" incorporating DCIM columns and also W3C media metadata initiative's recommended properties.  In actually usage for any give media item only a small subset of columns containe any data. but we do use almost all the columns at one time or another.  There are no blobs, so this is very light weight data.
>
> Anyway… this results in arrays which contain 1 top level key per record and that element contains another 40 or so keys for the columns of the database. most of which are empty/unused. So these arrays are never "heavy" in terms of bytes.
>
> e.g.
>
> aPlayList  may have 1000 keys (numeric 1-1000)
>
> where each top level key contains a whole record:
>
> in each one we have
>
> aPlayList [1]["title"]
> aPlayList [1]["subtitle"]
> aPlayList [1]["genre"]
> aPlayList [1]["description"]
> aPlayList [1]["artist"]
> aPlayList [1]["theme"]
> aPlayList [1]["creator"]
> aPlayList [1]["audience"]
>
> # and 30+  more "properties" for the media item
>
> OK so let's say user  want sto search "blues"  and I want the UX to check *all* columns in the array.  What is the best way to do this?
>
> I tried a simple test.
>
> on mouseup
> put "apple" into aFruits["1"]
> put "orange" into aFruits["2"]
> put "plum" into aFruits ["3"]
> put aFruits contains "orange"
> end mouseup
>
> and it returns "false"
>
> The only other strategy I can see would be
>
> put 1 into z # for our new filtered play list
>
> repeat for each key x in aPlaylist
>         repeat for each key y in aPlayList[x]
>            if aPlayList[x][y]contains "blues" then
>               put aPlayList[x] into aFilteredPlayList[z]
>               add 1 to z
>           end if
>          end repeat
> end repeat
>
> So then if we started with 1000 "records" in the array and we found "blues" in any column of any record, for, say 20 of them, we end up with a new array.
>
>    aFilteredPlayList  # containing top level keys 1-20 for 20 records, put the titles into a list field and viola: the clickline number matches the array key and away we go.
>
> OK I can make this work, (have to since I don't see another way)
>
> But it seems like a lot of looping.
>
> Is there a more efficient approach?
>
> BR
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