---
title: "Selecting individual elements of attribute type \"taxon\""
url: "https://openforis.support/questions/633/selecting-individual-elements-of-attribute-type-taxon"
tags: ["collect"]
status: "answered"
score: 1
answer_count: 1
asked: "2016-08-05T11:38:55"
last_activity: "2016-08-05T14:56:36"
source: "Open Foris Support - Q&A Forum"
license: "Copyright Open Foris, 2026. Some rights reserved under creative commons license."
---

# Selecting individual elements of attribute type "taxon"

Asked by hfuchs on 2016-08-05

Hi,
in collect I'd like to use an attribute of type "Taxon" for a validation with an expression. Is there any helper function for returning an individual element of the data type "taxon" (e.g. generus, family or vernacular name)?
Regards, Hans


## Answer (score 1, by Stefano (OF) on 2016-08-05)

Link: https://openforis.support/questions/633/selecting-individual-elements-of-attribute-type-taxon/635

Dear Hans,  
you can access fields of composite attributes (like Taxon, Coordinate, Date or Time) by using a "@" symbol before the attribute name in a expression. For example if "species" is your taxon attribute name, the expression can be something like `species/@vernacular_name` or `species/@scientific_name`.  
Unfortunately you can access only fields that are visible in the user interface, so right now you can access only code, scientific_name, vernacular_name, language_code and language_variety fields for a taxon attribute; there is no way to access the genus or the family accessing the related item in the species list but we are working to it and there will be some news from version 3.11.0 of Collect.  
If the name of the field you write is wrong, you will have a detailed error message in the for telling you which ones are the right expected names.  
Thanks,  
Open Foris Team

> Dear Ricci, thank you, that helps a lot and works fine. Hans (hfuchs)