asked on March 27, 2025
Hello Flexmonster-Team,
recently we noticed an "interesting behaviour" while using filters on our custom datasource.
Our specific case:
A customer wanted to filter some values for specific cities only. As it happens the city appears in our database with 2 different (viable) spellings: "Großenlüder" and "Grossenlüder". Flexmonster offers both variations in its filter options. But, unfortunately, our database cannot differentiate between those two.
We are using a non-binary collation, so if we select any city containing "ß" we would receive both results.
So when a user selects any of those options in the filter, the resulting query would return all rows with any of the two spellings. But, we suspect, Flexmonster does not expect more than the one spelling that was chosen. So it creates a row for each set that has the selected spelling but not for the other spelling. But as our database still returned those values the sum still consists of all data.
I hope the attached screenshots can help to understand the problem.
Since it's not possible for us to change collation, we were wondering if there is something on your end you could think of to resolve this issue (that, we suppose, might affect other german-speaking customers as well?)
Kind regards,
Florian
⋅ March 28, 2025
Hello, Florian!
Thank you for reaching out to us.
Flexmonster processes individual members as distinct values by design, meaning that variations in spelling (such as "Großenlüder" vs. "Grossenlüder") will be treated as separate entries. Currently, there is no built-in way to merge or recognize these variations as the same entity. To resolve this, we recommend preprocessing the data before it reaches Flexmonster. This could involve normalizing the city names during data retrieval, ensuring that only one spelling variation is used.
Also, could you clarify whether this issue occurs with data from a custom API or JSON data source? This information will help us to provide further recommendations if necessary.
Looking forward to hearing your feedback.
Best Regards,
Maksym
⋅ April 1, 2025
Hello Maksym,
thank you for your reply!
We are using a custom API data source.
Kind regards,
Florian
⋅ April 3, 2025
Hello, Florian!
Thank you for specifying your data source.
Kindly note that when using the custom data source API, Flexmonster relies on the server to get the list of members.
Since our component treats variations in spelling (such as "Großenlüder" vs. "Grossenlüder") as separate entries, our suggested approach would be to unify such members on the server side, ideally in the database. We understand that would require additional efforts from your side, but we believe that would be the best approach to ensure data consistency.
Please let us know if you have any other questions.
Kind regards,
Solomiia
⋅ April 15, 2025
Hello, Florian!
Hope you are doing well.
Our team is wondering if you had some time to check our previous response.
Do not hesitate to let us know if there are any further questions.
Kind regards,
Solomiia
