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183 lines
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Markdown
183 lines
10 KiB
Markdown
# Search
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<figure class="image"><img style="aspect-ratio:987/725;" src="Search_image.png" width="987" height="725"></figure>
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Note search enables you to find notes by searching for text in the title, content, or [attributes](../../Advanced%20Usage/Attributes.md) of the notes. You also have the option to save your searches, which will create a special search note which is visible on your navigation tree and contains the search results as sub-items.
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## Accessing the search
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* From the <a class="reference-link" href="../UI%20Elements/Launch%20Bar.md">Launch Bar</a>, look for the dedicated search button.
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* To limit the search to a note and its children, select _Search from subtree_ from the <a class="reference-link" href="../UI%20Elements/Note%20Tree/Note%20tree%20contextual%20menu.md">Note tree contextual menu</a> or press <kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>Shift</kbd>+<kbd>S</kbd>.
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## Interaction
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To search for notes, click on the magnifying glass icon on the toolbar or press the keyboard [shortcut](../Keyboard%20Shortcuts.md).
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1. Set the text to search for in the _Search string_ field.
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1. Apart from searching for words ad-literam, there is also the possibility to search for attributes or properties of notes.
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2. See the examples below for more information.
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2. To limit the search to a note and its sub-children, set a note in _Ancestor_.
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1. This value is also pre-filled if the search is triggered from a [hoisted note](Note%20Hoisting.md) or a [workspace](Workspaces.md).
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2. To search the entire database, keep the value empty.
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3. To limit the search to only a few levels of hierarchy (e.g. look in sub-children but not in sub-sub-children of a note), set the _depth_ field to one of the provided values.
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4. In addition to that, the search can be configured via the _Add search options_ buttons, as described in the follow-up section.
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5. Press _Search_ to trigger the search. The results are displayed below the search configuration pane.
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6. The _Search & Execute actions_ button is only relevant if at least one action has been added (as described in the section below).
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7. The _Save to note_ will create a new note with the search configuration. For more information, see <a class="reference-link" href="../../Note%20Types/Saved%20Search.md">Saved Search</a>.
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## Search options
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Click on which search option to apply from the Add search option section.
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* For each search option selected, the search configuration will update to reveal the entry. Each search option will have its own configuration.
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* To remove a search option, simply press the X button to the right of it.
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The options available are:
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1. Search script
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1. This feature allows writing a <a class="reference-link" href="../../Note%20Types/Code.md">Code</a> note that will handle the search on its own.
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2. Fast search
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1. The search will not look into the content of the notes, but it will still look into note titles and attributes, relations (based on the search query).
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2. This method can speed up the search considerably for large [databases](../../Advanced%20Usage/Database.md).
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3. Include archived
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1. <a class="reference-link" href="../Notes/Archived%20Notes.md">Archived Notes</a> will also be included in the results, whereas otherwise they would be ignored.
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4. Order by
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1. Allows changing the criteria for ordering the results, for example to order by creation date or alphabetically instead of by relevancy (default).
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2. It's also possible to change the order (ascending or descending) of the results.
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5. Limit
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1. Limits the results to a given maximum.
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2. This can help if the number of results would otherwise be high, at the cost of not being able to view all the results.
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6. Debug
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1. This will print additional information in the server log (see <a class="reference-link" href="../../Troubleshooting/Error%20logs.md">Error logs</a>), regarding how the search expression was parsed.
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2. This function is especially useful after understanding the search functionality in detail, in order to determine why a complex search query is not working as expected.
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7. Action
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1. Apart from just searching, it is also possible to apply actions such as to add a label or a relation to the notes that have been matched by the search.
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2. Unlike other search configurations, here it's possible to apply the same action multiple times (i.e. in order to be able to apply multiple labels to notes).
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3. The actions given are the same as the ones in <a class="reference-link" href="../../Advanced%20Usage/Bulk%20Actions.md">Bulk Actions</a>, which is an alternative for operating directly with notes within the <a class="reference-link" href="../UI%20Elements/Note%20Tree.md">Note Tree</a>.
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4. After defining the actions, first press _Search_ to check the matched notes and then press _Search & Execute actions_ to trigger the actions.
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### Simple Note Search Examples
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* `rings tolkien`: Full-text search to find notes containing both "rings" and "tolkien".
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* `"The Lord of the Rings" Tolkien`: Full-text search where "The Lord of the Rings" must match exactly.
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* `note.content *=* rings OR note.content *=* tolkien`: Find notes containing "rings" or "tolkien" in their content.
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* `towers #book`: Combine full-text and attribute search to find notes containing "towers" and having the "book" label.
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* `towers #book or #author`: Search for notes containing "towers" and having either the "book" or "author" label.
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* `towers #!book`: Search for notes containing "towers" and not having the "book" label.
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* `#book #publicationYear = 1954`: Find notes with the "book" label and "publicationYear" set to 1954.
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* `#genre *=* fan`: Find notes with the "genre" label containing the substring "fan". Additional operators include `*=*` for "contains", `=*` for "starts with", `*=` for "ends with", and `!=` for "is not equal to".
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* `#book #publicationYear >= 1950 #publicationYear < 1960`: Use numeric operators to find all books published in the 1950s.
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* `#dateNote >= TODAY-30`: A "smart search" to find notes with the "dateNote" label within the last 30 days. Supported smart values include NOW +- seconds, TODAY +- days, MONTH +- months, YEAR +- years.
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* `~author.title *=* Tolkien`: Find notes related to an author whose title contains "Tolkien".
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* `#publicationYear %= '19[0-9]{2}'`: Use the '%=' operator to match a regular expression (regex). This feature has been available since Trilium 0.52.
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### Advanced Use Cases
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* `~author.relations.son.title = 'Christopher Tolkien'`: Search for notes with an "author" relation to a note that has a "son" relation to "Christopher Tolkien". This can be modeled with the following note structure:
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* Books
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* Lord of the Rings
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* label: “book”
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* relation: “author” points to “J. R. R. Tolkien” note
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* People
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* J. R. R. Tolkien
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* relation: “son” points to "Christopher Tolkien" note
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* Christopher Tolkien
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* `~author.title *= Tolkien OR (#publicationDate >= 1954 AND #publicationDate <= 1960)`: Use boolean expressions and parentheses to group expressions. Note that expressions starting with a parenthesis need an "expression separator sign" (# or ~) prepended.
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* `note.parents.title = 'Books'`: Find notes with a parent named "Books".
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* `note.parents.parents.title = 'Books'`: Find notes with a grandparent named "Books".
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* `note.ancestors.title = 'Books'`: Find notes with an ancestor named "Books".
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* `note.children.title = 'sub-note'`: Find notes with a child named "sub-note".
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### Search with Note Properties
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Notes have properties that can be used in searches, such as `noteId`, `dateModified`, `dateCreated`, `isProtected`, `type`, `title`, `text`, `content`, `rawContent`, `ownedLabelCount`, `labelCount`, `ownedRelationCount`, `relationCount`, `ownedRelationCountIncludingLinks`, `relationCountIncludingLinks`, `ownedAttributeCount`, `attributeCount`, `targetRelationCount`, `targetRelationCountIncludingLinks`, `parentCount`, `childrenCount`, `isArchived`, `contentSize`, `noteSize`, and `revisionCount`.
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These properties can be accessed via the `note.` prefix, e.g., `note.type = code AND note.mime = 'application/json'`.
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### Order by and Limit
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```
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#author=Tolkien orderBy #publicationDate desc, note.title limit 10
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```
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This example will:
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1. Find notes with the author label "Tolkien".
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2. Order the results by `publicationDate` in descending order.
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3. Use `note.title` as a secondary ordering if publication dates are equal.
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4. Limit the results to the first 10 notes.
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### Negation
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Some queries can only be expressed with negation:
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```
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#book AND not(note.ancestor.title = 'Tolkien')
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```
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This query finds all book notes not in the "Tolkien" subtree.
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## Under the Hood
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### Label and Relation Shortcuts
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The "full" syntax for searching by labels is:
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```
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note.labels.publicationYear = 1954
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```
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For relations:
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```
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note.relations.author.title *=* Tolkien
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```
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However, common label and relation searches have shortcut syntax:
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```
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#publicationYear = 1954
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#author.title *=* Tolkien
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```
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### Separating Full-Text and Attribute Parts
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Search syntax allows combining full-text search with attribute-based search seamlessly. For example, `tolkien #book` contains:
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1. Full-text tokens - `tolkien`
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2. Attribute expressions - `#book`
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Trilium detects the separation between full text search and attribute/property search by looking for certain special characters or words that denote attributes and properties (e.g., #, ~, note.). If you need to include these in full-text search, escape them with a backslash so they are processed as regular text:
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```
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"note.txt"
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\#hash
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#myLabel = 'Say "Hello World"'
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```
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### Escaping Special Characters
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Special characters can be enclosed in quotes or escaped with a backslash to be used in full-text search:
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```
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"note.txt"
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\#hash
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#myLabel = 'Say "Hello World"'
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```
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Three types of quotes are supported: single, double, and backtick.
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### Type Coercion
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Label values are technically strings but can be coerced for numeric comparisons:
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```
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note.dateCreated =* '2019-05'
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```
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This finds notes created in May 2019. Numeric operators like `#publicationYear >= 1960` convert string values to numbers for comparison.
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## Auto-Trigger Search from URL
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You can open Trilium and automatically trigger a search by including the search [url encoded](https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/) string in the URL:
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`http://localhost:8080/#?searchString=abc` |