Using the Filter View

Looking for a set of topics that share particular characteristics? Interested in finding ones that have empty property fields you can complete? Want to create a special collection of topics within one of your basesto share with others? Or maybe you just want a shortcut to topics of special interest to you that you can access from your homepage? Then the Filter Table View is for you!

Freebase's Filter View provides an easy means to search through topics, create and share lists of topics, and create custom views of topics that you can add to your homepage or bases. Any view in Freebase, whether created by you, someone else, or as part of the Commons, can be searched, sorted, and the results saved as a new view. To show you how it works, this topic will take you through a couple examples of creating lists of topics from the Music Commons.

Contents

• Basic Searching and Sorting to Create a List
• Using the Advanced Filter Options
• Adding Topics to a List
• Creating New Views
• Advanced: Exporting Results, Viewing the MQL Query, and Adding Properties to Another Type
• Filter Table Features Overview

Basic Searching and Sorting to Create a List

Let's say you're interested in creating a list of alternative rock artists who got their start in Los Angeles.

1. On the Explore page go to Commons > Arts & Entertainment > Music > Musical Artist to see a list of all the musical artists listed in Freebase.
2. Click the Magnifying Glass icon next to the text box at the top of the list. This opens a menu of all the searchable fields for musical artists.
3. Select musical genres , then enter alternative rock in the text box. Notice that as you enter your search term, the autocomplete feature tries to match it to terms that are already associated with the musical genre field. Autocomplete is context sensitive, so it will always try to match your search terms with terms that already exist for your search field and the kinds of topics you're viewing. When Alternative rock appears as a matching term, select it.
4. Press Return.
5. After the search completes, your search field and search term (musical genre:alternative rock) are listed in the Filters box above the list of artists. If you wanted to remove this filter you'd click the x next to it and the list of artists would reset.
6. Repeat steps 2 and 3, but select place musical career began and enter Los Angeles as your search term.
7. Now that you have a list of alternative rock bands who started out in the LA scene, you can sort the list to present them in particular order, in this case, by name. Click name at the top of the far left column and the list will sort from a-z. Click it again and it will sort from z-a.
8. There are several options for what you can do with your new list.
   • If artists are missing from the list, you can add them as described in Adding Topics below.
   • If you want to save your list to your personal homepage or a domain, click Save, enter a name for your list, and then select where you want to save it.
   • If you want to share your list outside of Freebase, click share this in the upper-right corner. You can copy and paste a link to your list into a website, blog, or other online location, or you can bookmark it to a number of popular social bookmarking sites.

Using the Advanced Filter Options

In addition to searching for exact terms, the advanced filter options lets you create complex combined filters that can exclude certain terms, look for matches that start or end with terms, or even empty fields. For example, let's say that you want to create a list of alternative rock artists where information for the place musical career began field is missing because you want to help fill out that information. You can then save that list to your personal homepage and come back to work on it whenever you want.

1. Starting again with a view of all the Musical Artist topics, click advanced next to the search term text box. This opens the advanced filter options.
2. Select musical genres from the search field menu.
3. Select is from the operators menu.
   • Note that is and is not are the only two operators that work with autocomplete. When you select one of these two operators and begin entering a search term, autocomplete will suggest a match. Of the other operators contains, starts with, and ends with will make letter-by-letter matches of your search terms to terms entered in the selected search field. For example, if you searched for musical genres that contained rock, you'd get Rock music, Blues-rock, Progressive rock, and similar matches. is Empty and is not empty are used to find fields that either have information or don't, regardless of what the information is.
4. Enter alternative rock in the search text box.
5. Click + next to the filter you've just created to create another.
6. Select place musical career began from the search field menu.
7. Select is empty from the operators menu.
8. Click search.

You now have a list of alternative rock artists whose topics need information about where their musical careers began. You can save this list to your personal homepage or to a personal domain as described above. See the topic Editing Topic Properties for more about how to add information to topics.

Adding Topics to a List

Now that you have a list of a list of alternative rockers who got their start in the LA music scene, you may notice that one of your own favorite alt-rock LA bands is missing. It's easy enough to add them, or an entire list of bands, to the list you've created, and when you do, some of the information about them will be automatically added to their topic.

1. Click Add More just above the Filters box.
2. You can add a single topic by entering the name in the Name field, or you can add an entire list of topics by clicking Go to the import tool.
   • Note that you must be a registered user to add new topics, and you will be prompted to sign in if you haven't already.
3. Notice that the fields and search terms you used to create your list appear in the Add new topic dialog box. In technical terms, each topic in Freebase is associated with one or more types that identify what kind of thing it is (like a Musical Artist), and each type has multiple properties that provide specific information about that topic (like musical genre or place musical career began). By adding a topic to this list you've created, you're also telling Freebase that the values alternative rock and Los Angeles should be added to the musical genre and place musical career began properties for that artist. If the topic you're adding hasn't been typed as a Musical Artist already, it will be typed as a Musical Artist when you add it to the list.
4. Enter the name of the topic you want to add. Autocomplete will suggest matches for topics that already exist in the Freebase database.
5. If there aren't any existing topics that match the one you want to add, click Create a New One.
6. Click Add.
7. A confirmation message will let you know that your topic has been added and it will appear at the top of your list. Click on the name of the topic to view it and add more information. See the topic Editing Topic Properties for more about how to add information to topics.

Creating New Views

In addition to providing an easy way to make lists and add information to Freebase, the Filter View also has some advanced features that help you make entirely new views of information. This includes adding or removing columns of information, and selecting different ways to display information. Let's say, for example, you want to create a gallery view of alternative rock lead vocalists.

1. Start by going to whatever you want to use for your base view, in this case, the listing of all Musical Artists.
2. Click Make a view based on this one. This opens up several options for working with the view.
   • View As gives you options on how to display the information in your view
   • A text box appears above each column to enter search terms
   • An x appears next to each column name; click on the x to remove that column from the view
   • A + appears at the far left; click on it to see a complete list of all the columns that can be added to this view
3. Remove columns of information you don't want in your view by clicking the x next to the column name. In this case, the Article and Place Musical Career Began columns have been removed.
4. Click the + on the far left to see the columns that can be added to the view. In this case Role from Album Contributions in the Musical Artist type has been added.
   • Remember that columns represent the properties associated with each type, such as Musical Artist, Person, Musical Group, etc. The types and properties displayed here depend on which ones are most closely associated with the main type you're viewing, such as Musical Artist. If you want to add a property from a type that isn't displayed here, enter the name of the type in the search box to find and select it.
5. Enter search terms in the text box above the columns to filter the topics. In this case, alternative rock was entered for the musical genre column, while lead vocals was entered for the album contributions: role column.
6. Sort the results. For this example the results were sorted by name.
7. Select the display mode for your view, such as gallery.
8. You can now save or share the view you've created as described above.

Advanced: Exporting Results, Viewing the MQL Query, and Adding Properties to Another Type

The Filter View also offers some options for advanced users, all of which can be accessed by clicking the gear icon next to Add More .

• Export results - export the results in various file formats
• View the MQL query - view the Metaweb Query Language query that was used to generate the results of your filtering.
• Add properties to another type - The Add to another type option lets you delegate properties and topics from the filtered view to another type. The Delegated Properties topic contains more information and an example of how this works, but it's a simple process.

1. Add or remove properties from the view until you have the collection of properties you want to delegate to another type.
2. Filter the results until you have the collection of topics you want under this type.
3. Select Add to another type from Use Results.
4. Enter the name of an existing type, or create a new one.

For example, if you wanted to create a new type called Hard Rock Guitarist, you would remove all the properties from the view except Also Typed With and Musical Genres. You'd then filter on Guitarist and Hard Rock, respectively. When it came time to Add to another type, you would enter Hard Rock Guitarist, and voila, you'd have a new type with collection of topics ready to go. You could then add new properties to that type, like Preferred Instrument, and start adding new topics as well.

Filter View Features Overview