Feature Request: Search in compound field parents

[vera]

Overview of the Feature Request

We are interested in extending the Dataverse search functionality to support queries at the compound field parent level.

For example, the geospatial metadata block includes the compound field geographicCoverage (parent), with optional children: country, state, city, and otherGeographicCoverage.

We envision two new search use cases:

1. Find datasets with any geographic coverage metadata using geographicCoverage:*, instead of enumerating all children (country:* OR state:* OR city:* OR otherGeographicCoverage:*).

2. Find datasets containing specific terms anywhere in geographicCoverage, without needing to know or specify the exact child field. E.g., I might query for geographicCoverage:"new york" because I am not sure if the information was provided within the state or city field and I don't care, I just want to match anywhere within the geographic coverage compound field.

What kind of user is the feature intended for?
(Example users roles: API User, Curator, Depositor, Guest, Superuser, Sysadmin)

All search users (e.g. API user, guest).

What inspired the request?

Our service requires parent-level searches for compound fields as described.

What existing behavior do you want changed?

Enable direct searches on compound field parents.

Any brand new behavior do you want to add to Dataverse?

/

Any open or closed issues related to this feature request?

Not aware of any.

Are you thinking about creating a pull request for this feature?

Yes, I am testing an implementation (using Solr's copyfield directives to aggregate child fields into the parent field) and would like to submit a PR soon.

[pdurbin]

copyfield sounds like a good approach to me! Go go go! 🚀

[jggautier]

Just noting that I think #7856 is related