I have a lot of journal posts. It is not easy to find a specific one when I need to. Can I search for a keyword in a journal post title, or something like that?
i donāt think thereās a page that specifically allows this, and i donāt see anything in the API that specifically allows for this either. i think the best non-staff could manage is to use the API or scrape the journal page to return all your journal posts or a set of your journal posts within a date range, and then you would be able to use your own algorithm to search among those results.
are you looking for something in particular?
Thereās an existing feature request for journal search if thatās something that might meet your need.
Other users (and me) have also had success just using Google for this (https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/global-journal-search/10084).
Thereās also an existing request for journal tags.
4 Likes
My ājournalā posts are on my blog - where I can search for whatever I want.
My iNat journal posts are more like notes in passing. It is not a user-friendly format. Nor for readers, as they cannot search either. A ticker tape newsfeed, and yesterdayās news is binned.
My way of dealing with this (though I have nowhere near as many journal posts as yourself!) is to make another journal post to be an Index for the journal. There is then a hyperlink to that index on my profile, and the index simply lists the titles of posts with a hyperlink to each one.
4 Likes
If you can remember the title, you could Google itā¦ I tried that with one of mine and it came quite near the top of the search results - via iNat Ecuador for some reason!
2 Likes
Thanks Matthew ā that is not a bad idea!
Yes, my journal post āMosses of Manhattanā came out at the very top of a Google Search, but many of my journal posts have titles that are longer and more complicated than that. Perhaps I should start making all of my journal post titles short and pithy!
Especially because that one was found by a Swedish artist who now wants me to work with him.
2 Likes
Making an index is a great idea, thanks!
Title doesnāt have to be short for a Google search, but you do want to make sure the useful bit of the title comes first. Not ā¦ Preliminary investigation of blah blah blah ā¦ in mosses ā¦ in Manhattan.
I created an index for my posts, as well. The index is, itself, a journal post. And I put a link to that index/post in my profile.
Privately, on my own computer, I have a document with the formatting code for that (and all my) journal post and and a separate document with the links but no html code (easier to read for me).
It bears keeping in mind that the default url for a journal post contains the title of the post. So if you link to that full url and then later, down the road, change the title, the link will break.
But the url is comprised of
[address of iNat]/journal/[username]/[assigned_number]-[title of post]
If you copy off the url up to and including the [assigned_number] (donāt include title of the post), then the url will remain functional even if you change the title of the post.
Of course, if you change your username, the link will break as well.
I was researching a topic I had written about in a previous journal post and my old journal post came up as a Google search hit. But I just tried it with three different search terms and it didnāt with a more recent post. So thatās a hit-or-miss tactic.
1 Like
Hasnāt been indexed yet, Google spider hasnāt got to it yet.
this may or may not be useful.
page: https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNat_journal_posts
code: https://github.com/jumear/stirfry/blob/gh-pages/iNat_journal_posts.html
example usage: https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNat_journal_posts?user_id=matthewvosper&options=nobody
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.