Search by field

[victorengel]

I think this is documented somewhere, but I can’t find the documentation. I would like to search observations that have a field entered, Length (mm) is how it displays. I think the query uses the field identifier which is a number, but I don’t know how to find it. Also, can I sort by that field?

[victorengel]

I just noticed if you click on the field, there is a context menu that pops up that includes search observations with this field. That reveals the field name, which, in this case, turned out not to be numeric, as I thought it was.

[thebeachcomber]

@jdmore

Search for observation fields and values

You can specify observation fields and their values in the URL. For example, here are all of the observations with the observation field “Roadkill” set to “Yes”.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:roadkill=yes

You can search for all observations with a field regardless of the field value (e.g. the field “Habitat (s Afr)” only):
&field:Habitat%20(s%20Afr)

or with a field and value (e.g. “Habitat (s Afr)=Nama Karoo”):
&field:Habitat%20(s%20Afr)=Nama%20Karoo

You can also find observations missing a named field:
&without_field=Name of Associated Plant

You can easily combine these with other search strings. For example, the following shows all observations marked as being of insect herbivores of Eucalyptus.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=47158&field:Interaction->Herbivore%20of=51815

The taxon ID for Insecta is 47158 and for Eucalyptus is 51815 (which you find from the URLs of their taxon pages, https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47158-Insecta and https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/51815-Eucalyptus). The observation field used here is “Interaction->Herbivore of”. Note that the space in that field name needs to be replaced with a %20 in the URL so the browser doesn’t get confused.

Observation field view
https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/1234
Observation field view for a value: (e.g. Fynbos in Habitats-s-afr):
https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/7498?value=Fynbos (case sensitive)
Ascending list of observation fields:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields?order_by=name&order=asc
Descending list:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields?order_by=name&order=desc

see above