Searching for Documents using FormKiQ API

This tutorial will take you through different way to search for documents using the FormKiQ API.

Prerequisite

You have installed FormKiQ; see the FormKiQ One-Click Installation Links for more information
Install either: cURL or your favorite API Client, like Postman.
Optionally install: JQ, a command-line JSON processor which formats JSON so it is more readable.
All shell commands are shown for Unix-based systems. Windows has analogous commands for each.

Get JWT Authentication Token

You first need to get an authorization token to access the FormKiQ API. See Getting an JWT Authentication Token for steps on how to get the token.

CloudFormation Outputs

We are going to need to know the name FormKiQ of a few AWS resources creating during the FormKiQ installation. Opening the CloudFormation console, find your FormKiQ stack and click the Outputs tab.

The following are outputs we’ll need to know.

For all API requests the following table describes the values that need to be replaced in the API request.

Argument

Description

HTTP_API_URL

The URL for the API endpoint that uses Cognito authorization.

AUTHORIZATION_TOKEN

The token retrieved from Step 1.

Search for a Document Tag

The POST /search API is the primary method for search for documents with a specific tag.

curl -X POST https://HTTP_API_URL/search \
   -H "Authorization: AUTHORIZATION_TOKEN" -d '{"query":{"tag":{"key": "category"}}}'

A successful response will return matching documents:

{
  "documents": [
    {
      "documentId": "05c1dc43-e9f3-4bb5-9732-077c02dac2c9",
      "matchedTag": {
        "type": "USERDEFINED",
        "value": "thing",
        "key": "category"
      },
      "contentType": "application/pdf",
      ...
    }
  ]
}

Search for a Document Tag / Value

The following example show how to search for a specific tag / value combination.

curl -X POST https://HTTP_API_URL/search \
   -H "Authorization: AUTHORIZATION_TOKEN" -d '{"query":{"tag":{"key": "category","eq":"person"}}}'

A successful response will return matching documents:

{
  "documents": [
    {
      "documentId": "05c1dc43-e9f3-4bb5-9732-077c02dac2c9",
      "matchedTag": {
        "type": "USERDEFINED",
        "value": "thing",
        "key": "category"
      },
      "contentType": "application/pdf",
      ...
    }
  ]
}

Search for a Document Tag / Value

The following example show how to search for a specific tag and where the value starts with a specific characters.

curl -X POST https://HTTP_API_URL/search \
   -H "Authorization: AUTHORIZATION_TOKEN" -d '{"query":{"tag":{"key": "category","beginsWith":"p"}}}'

Search for Document Composite Key

FormKiQ Pro and Enterprise have a TagSchema Module which allows defining document composite keys which allows for searching for multiple tags.

curl -X POST https://HTTP_API_URL/search \
   -H "Authorization: AUTHORIZATION_TOKEN" -d '{"query":{"tags":[{"key":"category","eq":"person"},{"key": "playerId","eq":"111"}]}}'

Search using Full Text Module

FormKiQ Enterprise has an Advanced Document Search Module provides FormKiQ integration with AWS OpenSearch which is an AWS fully managed Elasticsearch-compatible service.

curl -X POST https://HTTP_API_URL/searchFulltext \
   -H "Authorization: AUTHORIZATION_TOKEN" -d '{"path": "test.txt","contentType": "text/plain","content": "This is sample content","tags":[{"key":"category","value":"person"}]}'

A successful response will return a list of documents:

{
  "documents": [
    {
      "documentId": "83afd66e-9f16-4a62-a286-1e8c54c449d8",
      "path": "sample.pdf",
      ...
    }
  ]
}

OpenSearch Custom/Complex Queries

The POST /queryFulltext allows for custom, complex queries using the OpenSearch search API.

The request body is set to any valid OpenSearch Search API request.

curl -X POST https://HTTP_API_URL/documents/queryFulltext \
   -H "Authorization: AUTHORIZATION_TOKEN" -d '{"query":{"match_all":{}}}'

Query Results

{
  "result": {
    "took": 68.0,
    "hits": {
      "max_score": 1.0,
      "hits": [
        {
          "_index": "formkiq_bb69d12f-d598-4db5-8307-641c6d0a2b16",
          "_id": "bf4a0257-58e0-4e54-800f-e0a060d4ebfe",
          "_score": 1.0,
          "_source": {
            "content": "some test stuff",
            "documentId": "bf4a0257-58e0-4e54-800f-e0a060d4ebfe",
            ...
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Summary

To learn more about how you can use the FormKiQ API to collect, organize, process, and integrate your documents and web forms, see the full list of FormKiQ How-To.