Advanced Search¶

The dandiset list's search box accepts a Gmail/GitHub-style syntax that lets you mix free-text terms with structured key:value operators. Filter by creation date, species, file type, contributor, role, owner, and more — all from the same input.

Quick examples¶

neuropixels species:mouse created_after:2023-01-01
author:"Doe, Jane" funder:NIH
data_curator:"Smith, Alice" published_after:2024-01-01
contributor:0000-0002-2990-9889 standard:nwb
affiliation:Stanford

Operators combine with AND. Quoted phrases ("like this") are treated as a single value. Anything you type without a key: prefix is full-text matched against the dandiset metadata, the same way the original search box worked.

How operators combine¶

Operators describe the dandiset, not individual assets. Each operator is an independent constraint at the dandiset level. species:mouse species:rat returns dandisets that have at least one mouse asset AND at least one rat asset — they can be the same asset (multi-species recording) or two different assets (a comparative-species dandiset).
Free text + operators: ANDed together. place cells species:mouse returns dandisets whose metadata contains "place" AND "cells" AND has at least one mouse asset.
Multiple different operators: ANDed at the dandiset level. author:Doe funder:NIH returns dandisets where someone named Doe is an Author and someone named NIH is a Funder. They can be different contributor entries. species:mouse approach:electrophysiological returns dandisets that have some mouse data AND some electrophysiology data — possibly on different assets, possibly on the same one.
Quoting: wrap multi-word values in double quotes, e.g. technique:"spike sorting". A whole token wrapped in quotes opts out of operator parsing — "author:Doe" searches for the literal text author:Doe rather than running the operator.

Operator reference¶

Dates¶

All take an ISO date in the form YYYY-MM-DD. Bounds are exclusive on _before and inclusive on _after.

Operator	What it filters
`created_before:YYYY-MM-DD`	Dandiset's `created` timestamp before the date
`created_after:YYYY-MM-DD`	Dandiset's `created` timestamp on/after the date
`modified_before:YYYY-MM-DD`	Most recent version's `modified` timestamp before the date
`modified_after:YYYY-MM-DD`	Most recent version's `modified` timestamp on/after the date
`published_before:YYYY-MM-DD`	Most recent published version's `created` timestamp before the date (draft-only dandisets are excluded)
`published_after:YYYY-MM-DD`	Most recent published version's `created` timestamp on/after the date

created_after:2024-01-01                    # everything created since 2024
modified_after:2025-01-01 modified_before:2026-01-01   # changed during 2025
published_after:2023-01-01                  # published since 2023

Asset content¶

Substring matches (case-insensitive) against the dandiset's asset metadata. A dandiset matches if at least one of its assets satisfies the predicate. Multiple asset operators are AND'd at the dandiset level — each must be satisfied by some asset, but not necessarily the same one. See How operators combine above.

Operator	What it matches
`species:VALUE`	Substring against any `wasAttributedTo[].species.name`
`approach:VALUE`	Substring against any `approach[].name`
`technique:VALUE`	Substring against any `measurementTechnique[].name`
`standard:VALUE`	Substring against any `dataStandard[].name`
`file_type:VALUE`	`encodingFormat` startswith. Accepts the aliases `nwb`, `image`, `text`, `video`, or any MIME prefix (`application/x-nwb`, `image/`, ...)

species:mouse                          # House mouse, Mus musculus, etc.
species:"Mus musculus"                 # exact-ish phrase match
approach:electrophysiological          # any contributor's approach contains this
technique:"spike sorting"
standard:nwb
file_type:image                        # → image/* mime types
file_type:application/x-nwb            # explicit MIME prefix

Owner¶

Operator	What it matches
`owner:VALUE`	Dandisets owned by users matching `VALUE` (case-insensitive) against `username`, `email`, `first_name`, `last_name`, or `"first_name last_name"`

owner:alice
owner:alice@example.com
owner:Smith                            # any user named Smith
owner:"Jane Doe"                       # full display name

If a name matches multiple users (e.g. two Smiths), dandisets owned by any of them are returned.

Contributors¶

The contributor operators search the dandiset's metadata.contributor[] list (the same data shown in the "Contributors" section on the landing page). Each operator matches a contributor by name, email, OR identifier — which means ORCID for Person contributors (0000-0002-2990-9889) and ROR URL for Organization contributors (https://ror.org/01cwqze88) both work. Bare-ID substrings (01cwqze88) match the full URL.

Operator	Role constraint
`contributor:VALUE`	Any role (catch-all)
`author:VALUE`	Must hold the `Author` role
`contact_person:VALUE`	Must hold the `ContactPerson` role
`data_collector:VALUE`	Must hold the `DataCollector` role
`data_curator:VALUE`	Must hold the `DataCurator` role
`data_manager:VALUE`	Must hold the `DataManager` role
`maintainer:VALUE`	Must hold the `Maintainer` role
`project_leader:VALUE`	Must hold the `ProjectLeader` role
`funder:VALUE`	Must hold the `Funder` role
`sponsor:VALUE`	Must hold the `Sponsor` role

contributor:"Doe, Jane"                # any role
author:Doe                             # Doe specifically as an Author
data_curator:0000-0002-2990-9889       # this ORCID, must be a DataCurator
funder:NIH                             # NIH (or any string containing NIH) as Funder
funder:01cwqze88                       # by ROR id
author:Doe funder:NIH                  # both must hold (possibly different people)

The role-restricting operators map to the DANDI schema's RoleType values. The catch-all contributor: covers any other role (Conceptualization, Researcher, etc.); for those, filter by name and use the landing page to check the specific role.

Affiliation¶

affiliation is special — affiliations live in a nested field (contributor[].affiliation[]), not as a role on the contributor itself. The operator queries that path:

Operator	What it matches
`affiliation:VALUE`	Substring against any contributor's affiliation `name` OR `identifier` (ROR URL)

affiliation:Stanford                       # any contributor affiliated with Stanford
affiliation:"University College London"
affiliation:00f54p054                      # Stanford's ROR id (substring of the URL)
author:Doe affiliation:Stanford            # Doe as author AND someone Stanford-affiliated

Recipes¶

Find recent NWB dandisets from a particular lab.

file_type:nwb affiliation:"University College London" published_after:2024-01-01

Find dandisets where I'm the contact person.

contact_person:"My Name"

Find dandisets funded by NIH with mouse data.

funder:NIH species:mouse

Find dandisets that cite a particular ORCID as an author.

author:0000-0002-2990-9889

Find your own dandisets in the listing.

owner:"Your Name"

(Or use the My Dandisets tab if you're signed in — it's the same set.)

Quoting rules¶

Wrap a multi-word value in double quotes: technique:"spike sorting", contributor:"Doe, Jane", affiliation:"Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory".
Wrap a whole token in double quotes to opt out of operator parsing — useful when the text you're searching for contains a colon: "foo:bar" searches for the literal text foo:bar.
Unbalanced quotes return a 400 with a friendly error message.

Error messages¶

Invalid syntax doesn't fail silently. Common cases:

What you type	What you get back
`specie:mouse`	400 — `Unknown search operator "specie". Did you mean "species"?`
`data_curatr:Doe`	400 — `Did you mean "data_curator"?`
`created_after:not-a-date`	400 — `Invalid date for "created_after"; Use YYYY-MM-DD.`
`hello "world`	400 — `Unbalanced quote in search query. Remove the stray quote...`
`owner:` (empty value)	400 — `Operator "owner" requires a value`

Typo suggestions are produced by difflib.get_close_matches; they're a hint, not authoritative.

Using from the API¶

The same syntax works against the REST API — the search string lives in the ?search= query parameter on /api/dandisets/:

curl 'https://api.dandiarchive.org/api/dandisets/?search=species:mouse+author:Doe'

import requests
r = requests.get(
    'https://api.dandiarchive.org/api/dandisets/',
    params={'search': 'species:mouse author:Doe', 'draft': 'true', 'empty': 'true'},
)
r.json()

The OpenAPI description on /swagger/ lists every operator inline.

Limitations and notes¶

Substring, case-insensitive. species:mouse matches House mouse, Mus musculus, etc. There's no exact-match mode at the moment — use a longer substring to narrow.
No OR or NOT. Operators always combine with AND. To express OR, run two queries (or wait for a future revision; see below).
No nesting. (species:mouse OR species:rat) and similar grammar isn't supported.
AND combines at the dandiset level for assets and contributors. Each asset operator filters dandisets independently — different operators may match different assets within the same dandiset. Contributor operators combine on the same version's contributor list (so a draft + published version with disjoint contributors don't combine into a spurious match); within that single version, different contributor operators may match different entries of contributor[].
?user=me (an existing query parameter) still works for "my dandisets"; there's no owner:me magic alias in the operator syntax.
Free-text and operators combine. The same ?search= parameter accepts both, so you don't need a different endpoint depending on whether you have operators.