The Virtual Group entry type acts like a group. This entry type can have any number of its own children entries but also can have other entries virtually. These entries can be specified explicitly, can be defined with search criteria or even can reference entries in other external RAMADDA servers. For example, on the Examples page on ramadda.org this entry type is used to list the latest examples. When editing a Virtual Group there is a list of Entry IDs. This can hold individual entry IDs or aliases, one per line. Comment out a line with "#". One can also include the children of another entry with:

children:<other entry id>

The line may be a search URL for a particular entry type. To use this:

• Go to the search form, e.g. for Archive Books https://ramadda.org/repository/search/type/type_archive_book
• Perform your search. Optionally adjust the "# Records" to the desired number
• At the bottom of the search page press the Copy URL button:
• Go to the Edit page of the Virtual Group Entry and paste the URL into the list of entry IDS, e.g.:

  /repository/search/do?forsearch=true&type=type_archive_book&provider=this&orderby=name&ascending=true&max=100&skip=0
  

The Entry IDs can also explicitly contain search criteria. The parameters of the search are specified one per line and the search is evaluated when seeing the term "search" on a single line. For example, below is the specification to search for any entry with the text "foobar":

search.text=foobar
search

Here we are doing the same search but only using 3 entries:

search.text=foobar
search.max=3
search

To order the search, e.g., getting the most recent 5 entries do:

search.text=foobar
search.orderby=createdate
search.ascending=false
search.max=5
search

Multiple searches can be done:

search.text=foo
search.max=3
search

search.text=bar
search.max=10
search

Here we are searching for entries with the text "foobar" in the name:

search.text=name:foobar
search

For example, below specified to search for the entry type "type_point_snotel" within the given NWSE bounding box:

search.type=type_point_snotel
search.bbox=46.218091,-113.484429,42.218091,-109.484429
search

Below we are searching under two entries for the children of the entries, sorting the list of entries and only using the first 42 entries. The entries with IDs some_entry_id and some_other_entry_id are being excluded.

search.group=2705cd9a-3d51-41be-86eb-c624506093ea|5f2234d6-6332-441f-8bab-0076a8cc4d95
search.max=42
search.orderby=createdate
search.ascending=false
search

Any entries can be excluded with:

not:some_entry_id
not:some_other_entry_id

For the example showing the Latest entries under RAMADDA's Example page we use a Virtual Group entry with the following search criteria (with comments):

#search for children under each of these other entries.
#These are the main Examples entries - Charts, IMDV Maps, Maps, Science Data, etc
search.group=52644ac1-f6d6-45ea-88af-b5d2ec75742e|1012d4bb-5e57-460a-95f5-07c997bd04e8|3ebcb4f4-fa4d-4fb3-9ede-d42ec7e0aa9d | eb4102f8-720f-4ef3-9211-0ce5940da04d|b36bb6fc-b2c4-4d12-8c31-1f4dcff6881e|1d0fa3f5-407e-4a39-a3da-9a5ed7e1e687| ...
#Only show at most 42
search.max=42
#Specify the search order to get the most recently created
search.orderby=createdate
search.ascending=false
#apply the search
search
#exclude a couple of entries
not:53f411f7-9390-4afc-9cb9-e7313030498b
not:4624f63d-cd71-43e8-a558-83835c6b5541

Entries on other external RAMADDAs can also be incorporated by prefacing the line with "remote:"

#This references a single entry
remote:https://ramadda.org/repository/entry/show?entryid=2f7211e9-e5a9-4a73-8a47-fb079764be26

#This references a single entry with its alias
remote:https://sdn.ramadda.org/repository/a/aihec

To do a search for a particular type on a remote RAMADDA go to that RAMADDA and do the entry type based search, e.g. for "CR1000 Data Logger" entries. Specify any search criteria, e.g. order by Create Data and get at most 5. Then open up the More... and copy the RAMADDA XML Export link: Now go to your Virtual Group entry and enter the link on a line with the prefix "remote:search:", e.g.:

remote:search:https://ramadda.org/repository/search/type/type_point_cr1000?datadate.mode=overlaps&datadate.relative=none&max=5&orderby=createdate&search.submit=Search&type=type_point_cr1000&output=xml.xml

If you want to do a regular search (i.e., through the default Search form) go to that remote RAMADDA and enter your search, e.g. for "foobar": Now, at the bottom of the form you can copy the full search link with the link or view the full search link in your browser then copy the URL with the link. Then go to your own RAMADDA and under the Entry Ids add the search link, e.g.:

remote:search:https://ramadda.org/repository/search/do?text=foobar&search.submit=Search&search.submit=search.submit&output=default.html&orderby=none&datadate.mode=overlaps&datadate.relative=none&createdate.relative=none&changedate.relative=none&areamode=overlaps&provider=this