Is there a way to limit the observations returned to only those… that have an observation field called, say… “other organism” and that observation field is of type taxon and that observation field used names lookup and that observation field has an iconic_taxa of, say… plantae? I can …

If I understood your question correctly, then the answer is no, but see this feature request: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/searching-observations-with-this-field-and-value-for-fields-that-use-a-taxon-as-the-datatype-should-show-children-taxa/51902

yah, i’m gonna mark it solved and vote for that. that’s kinda the same thing, but more complex actually. i was just wanting to filter results by iconic that’s stored with the taxon for the OBS fields of type taxon… we aren’t supposed to define OBS fields that are specific to a taxon (e.g. using “…

[image] stockslager: that have an observation field called, say… “other organism” possible via parameter &field:oother%20organism [image] stockslager: that observation field is of type taxon sort of possible via &ofv_datatype=taxon. otherwise, currently only possible on the client sid…

[image] pisum: likely not possible. Does it help at all that the names lookup would seemingly always store a numeric as the value (corresponding to the taxon_id) and an external interface bypassing names lookup would seemingly always store a non-numeric (the name) as the obs field value? sel…

if you want to delineate things that way, sure, it’s possible to filter for only observations with numeric values in that observation field, but you’d have to do that on the client side, i believe.

Finally had time to revisit this a little. Now loading data into the session so I can filter more than one page, in theory… only loading 200 rows for now (limit on the query set to 1000). Is this closer to how you’d expect it to work? new version

[image] stockslager: Is this closer to how you’d expect it to work? i’m not sure what you’re trying to build.

Mainly, it’s something that allows you to -or- observation fields together. There are many observation fields that are synonymous or nearly synonymous. This is something that comes up quite a bit on the forum (ability to -or- them together) and I thought it’d be nice if something existed to do thi…

ok. based on your description, i suppose the page is doing what you’re describing. without knowing what it’s supposed to do, it’s just not obvious what it’s supposed to do or how to get it to do what it’s supposed to do. however, i think i can see how you’ve incorporated #2 from your original post,…

sorry, yes… it’s still pretty confusing. I added a splash page similar to one of the links jwidness shared on another thread. the splash page requires an ofv_datatype (or you can specify “all”) and also allows any of the other parameters the obs endpoint takes to build the cache. when I set ofv_da…

Observations API?

General

rainhead October 29, 2025, 3:11pm 2

I think you can find what you’re looking for in this thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-use-inaturalists-search-urls-wiki-part-1-of-2/63 . The parameters for the observations endpoint are almost exactly those of the regular search/explore page.

Topic		Replies	Views
Searching "Observations with this field and value" for fields that use a Taxon as the datatype should show children taxa Feature Requests	8	395	January 3, 2025
Select observations with observation fields General question	3	288	June 8, 2024
How do you filter records based on Observation fields - for instance host plant? General question	8	914	September 23, 2022
Running observation queries Bug Reports web , question	8	611	February 15, 2023
Create Filter by Observation Field Feature Requests web	10	1362	May 12, 2024

Observations API?

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