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Advanced Batch Find and Replace

Archipelago's Advanced Batch Find and Replace functionality provides different ways for you to efficiently Find/Search and Replace metadata values found in the raw JSON of your Digital Objects and Collections. Advanced Batch Find and Replace makes use of customized Actions that extend Drupal's VBO module to enable these powerful batch metadata replacement Actions in your Archipelago environment.

Where to Find

In default Archipelagos, you can find Advanced Batch Find and Replace:

  • Through the Tools menu > Advanced Batch Find and Replace
  • Directly at /search-and-replace

Tools Menu Find and Replace

Site Administrator Note
  • The View driving this can be found at /admin/structure/views/view/solr_search_content_with_find_and_replace. The default Facets referenced above can be found at /admin/structure/block/list/archipelago_subtheme in the Sidebar Second section. Please proceed with caution if making any changes to the default configurations for this View or the Facets referenced on this View Page.

Main Page Overview

From the main page (display title 'Search and Replace'), you will see:

  • A Fulltext Search box
  • Dropdown list of available Actions
  • Listing of all the Digital Objects and Collections found in your Archipelago repository
    • Option to Select/deselect all results in this view (all pages) via toggle switch
    • Same toggle switch option beside each individual Object/Collection to select one-at-a-time
    • Expandable ► Raw Metadata (JSON) section beneath each each individual Object/Collection containing the full Raw JSON metadata record for reference
  • Expandable section to show all the Selected items in this view (will be 0 items to start).
    • Individual selections made on different results pages will be preserved in the overall total of Selected items available for preview on this main/top page.

Find and Replace Main Page

Default Facets Configured

You will also see a listing of a few different default Facets configured to help guide your selection of potential Digital Objects/Collections:

  • Object Type
    • the Archipelago Digital Object/Collection Type
    • JSON key: type
  • JSON keys in your metadata
    • all of the potential JSON keys that are present in your repository
    • includes 'flattened' keys that may not be readily accessible via Webform elements (such as Archipelago-generated technical and administrative keys)
  • Ingest Method Service URL
    • The URL of the Digital Object/Collection Webforms and AMI Sets present in your repository that were used to create Digital Objects/Collections.
    • Please note that using the Find and Replace Webform functionality to update ADOs will cause the original AMI Set URL identified in this Facet to be overwritten and replaced with the specified Webform used during the replacement execution.

Available Actions

The default options available through the Action dropdown menu include:

  • *Export Archipelago Digital Objects to CSV content item
  • Text based find and replace Metadata for Archipelago Digital Objects content item
  • Webform find-and-replace Metadata for Archipelago Digital Objects content item
  • JSON Patch Metadata for Archipelago Digital Objects content item
  • *Publish Digital Object
  • *Unpublish Digital Object
  • *Change the author of content
  • **Trigger Strawberrry Runners process/reprocess for Archipelago Digital Objects content item
  • *Delete selected entities/translations

* denotes Action options that are also shared with the main Content Page Action Menu

**You can read more about Strawberry Runners Post-Processing Actions here

Find and Replace Actions

Find and Replace Specific Actions

After reviewing the 'Important Notes & Workflow Recommendations' below, please see the following separate pages for detailed examples walking through the usage of the three different Find and Replace specific actions.

Important Notes & Workflow Recommendations

Important Note

The Actions available through Archipelago's Advanced Batch Find and Replace can potentially have repository-wide effects. It is strongly recommended that you proceed with caution when executing any of the available Actions.

Adding New Facets

The default Facets available through Archipelago's Advanced Batch Find and Replace have an important configuration selection made on each individual Facet. For every new Facet you add for Find and Replace, you need to select the checkboxes for both the 'VBO batch handler' settings to use the VBO Batch Facet processor, and the selection within the 'VBO batch handler settings' to Use URL based facets in VBO Batches. You need to make sure these are selected so that the "visible" list/count of objects you filter using a Facet is respected during actual VBO process execution of batch changes you make for any Find and Replace Actions. Also, please be aware that Drupal's VBO does not pass a "limit" (except if your VIEW has actually a "SHOW" a defined number of results which most users will never use). Because of that, when you run a VBO-based action, the default batch limitation will be set to the Search API/Solr defined Limit. You can view this Limit information at

'~yoursite/admin/config/search/search-api/server/esmero_solr/edit', under the Advanced Tab. This all means that if you first set a Limit of 100 in your Search API/SOLR defined Limit, then you see 1000 objects in your Find and Replace results and select all 1000 results for batch change operations, when you run your Find and Replace action only 100 changes will be processed. There is no way Archipelago can work around that VBO related behavior (for now, except open an ISSUE, perhaps a way can be found!).

Simulation Mode

Before executing any of the available Find and Replace Actions, the best-practice workflow recommendation is to always first run in Simulation Mode:

  • Before the final 'Execute Action' step of your Find and Replace operation, select the option to '☑️ only simulate and debug affected JSON'. This will run a quick check against your Action specifications and the potentially impacted Digital Objects and Collections.
  • You can then double check that the total effected changes shown reflect your intended amount of changes.
    • The total number of changes will always be multipled by a factor of 2, as the Actions count a first step of checking against your data, then the second step of applying the change.
    • If your Action specifications do not match against any JSON metadata values in your specified results, you will also see that no matches were applicable.

Find and Replace Simulation Mode

  • Once you have reviewed the results of the Simulation Mode and confirmed the simulated results match your intentend amount of changes, proceed with executing the Action you first simulated.

Checking Your Changes

After applying any of the Find and Replace Actions, you can review the specific changes that were made within the Revision history of the impacted Digital Objects and Collections.

  • Through the Find and Replace page results listing or the main Content page, navigate to the Digital Object/Collection you wish to review.
  • Open the 'Revision' tab.
  • The details for the specific Action executed will be visible. All of the Find and Replace Actions will result in slightly different operation notes within the the Revision history.

Find and Replace Revision Check

Thank you for reading! Please contact us on our Archipelago Commons Google Group with any questions or feedback.

Return to the Archipelago Documentation main page.