THL Toolbox > Developers' Zone > Ruby On Rails Development > Setting the Place Dictionary's Initial State with GET Parameters

Setting The Place Dictionary's Initial State With GET Parameters

Contributor(s): Tom Benner

The following GET parameters can be used to initialize the Place Dictionary's search results to show a specific search:

• filter - The text of the main search box
• scope - Where the filter value should be looked for ("full_text", "name")
• match - The type of match for filter ("contains", "begins", "exactly")
• object_type - Feature type ID
• characteristic_id - Characteristic ID
• has_descriptions - When set to "1", only features with essays will be returned

If you're having trouble finding any IDs (like feature type IDs), do the following:

1. Perform the search in the PD with the Firebug console active
2. Right-click on the new line in the console that begins with "POST" and select "Copy location with parameters"
3. Paste this into a text editor and look for the value of the parameter in question

For example, the following URL would return features with feature type "" that have essays: http://places.thlib.org/?object_type=4555&has_descriptions=1

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