Search

Using the query search API you can retrieve lists of resources in various ways. In your templates, you do so through the search model:

{% for id in m.search[{query (options go here...) }] %}

For instance, to select all news items, ordered by their modification date, newest first:

{% for id in m.search[{query cat='news' sort='-rsc.modified'}] %}
    {{ id }}
{% endfor %}

Trying it out

Of course you can create your own for-loop in a template, but there are easier ways to check out the inner workings of the query model: through your browser.

The query-model is exposed to the browser in (currently) 2 URLs: the Atom feed module for creating a customized update feed, and the API for receiving lists of ids in JSON.

Get all resources of the “documentation” category on zotonic.com:

https://zotonic.com/api/model/search/get?qcat=documentation

Get a feed of most recent documentation containing the word “filter”:

https://zotonic.com/feed/search?cat=documentation&text=filter

Note

mod_atom_feed automatically sorts on last-modified date, api/model/search/get doesn’t.

Query arguments

cat

Filter resources on a specific category:

cat='news'

Specifying multiple ‘cat’ arguments will do an OR on the categories. So to select both news and person resources:

cat='news' cat='person'

cat_exact

Filter resources to include the given category, but exclude any subcategory:

cat_exact='news'

cat_exclude

Filter resources to exclude the given category:

cat_exclude='meta'

id_exclude

Filter resources to exclude the ones with the given ids:

id_exclude=123

filter

Filtering on columns:

filter=['pivot_title', 'Hello']

In its most simple form, this does an ‘equals’ compare filter. The filter keywords expects a list. If the list is two elements long, we expect the first column to be the filter column name from the database table, and the second column name to be the filter value:

filter=['numeric_value', `gt`, 10]

If the filter is a three-column list, the second column is the operator. This must be an atom (surround it in backquotes!) and must be one of the following: eq, ne, gt, gte, lt, lte; or one of =, <>, >, >=, <, <=:

filter=['numeric_value', `>`, 10]

It is possible to define an OR query for multiple terms:

filter=[ ['numeric_value', `>`, 10], ['numeric_value', `<=`, 0] ]

hassubject

Select all resources that have an incoming edge from the given page, which is specified by the argument (the page id 123 in the example, or the unique page name tag_gift). Optionally, you can pass the name of a predicate as the second argument, to specify that the connection should have this predicate.

So, to select all resources that have an incoming edge from a subject with id 123:

hassubject=123

Alternatively, use the subject’s unique name:

hassubject='tag_gift'

Specifying this multiple times does an AND of the conditions:

hassubject=123
hassubject=[123,'author']

hasobject

Like hassubject, but selects all pages that have an outgoing edge to the given page, which is specified by the argument. Optionally, you can pass the name of a predicate as the second argument, to specify that the connection should have this predicate:

hasobject=123
hasobject='tag_gift'
hasobject=[123,'hasdocument']

hasanyobject

Like hasobject, but allows to define an OR operation on the edge. You can define multiple combinations of predicates and objects; any resource having such an outgoing edge will be matched. The argument is a list. Each element in the list is either an id or an id/predicate combination.

To select all resources that have an outgoing edge to an object with id 1, 2 or 3:

hasanyobject=[1, 2, 3]

For each list element, you can add the connection’s predicate. So, to select all resources that have an outgoing ‘author’ edge to an object with id 123:

hasanyobject=[[123, 'author']]

And to do the same but also include resources that have an ‘editor’ edge to an object with id 456:

hasanyobject=[[123, 'author'], [456, 'editor']]

Substitute '*' for the object id to match any object. So, to select all resources that have any author or editor edge:

hasanyobject[['*', 'author'], ['*', 'editor']]

You can also mix the two types of elements. To select all resources that have an author or a connection (with any predicate) to resource 2 or 3:

hasanyobject[['*', 'author'], 2, 3]

match_objects

Find the resources that have similar object edges as the given resource. This is done using a full text query. The resource with most overlapping objects ids will be returned first:

match_objects=1234

An id_exlude=... is automatically added for the resource in the argument.

match_object_ids

Find the resources that have similar object edges to the given resources. This is done using a full text query. The resource with most overlapping objects ids will be returned first:

match_object_ids=[108, 238, 1234]

is_authoritative

Boolean, filters whether a resource is considered authoritative (originating from this site) or not:

is_authoritative

is_featured

A boolean option that specifies if a page should be featured or not:

is_featured

is_published

Select published, unpublished or omit the publish check. Legal values are true, false or all:

is_published='all'

upcoming

Specifying ‘upcoming’ means that you only want to select things that have a start date which lies in the future. Like the name says, useful to select upcoming events:

upcoming

ongoing

Specifying ‘ongoing’ means that you only want to select things that are happening now: that have a start date which lies in the past, and an end date which lies in the future:

ongoing

finished

Specifying ‘finished’ means that you only want to select things that have a start date which lies in the past:

finished

unfinished

Specifying ‘unfinished’ means that you only want to select things that have an end date which lies in the future:

unfinished

unfinished_or_nodate

Specifying ‘unfinished_or_nodate’ means that you only want to select things that have an end date which lies in the future or no start date:

unfinished_or_nodate

sort / asort / zsort

Sort the result on a field. The name of the field is a string which directly refers to the SQL join that is being used. If you specify a dash (-) in front of the field, the order is descending. Leaving this out or specifying a + means ascending.

The sort terms are added in the order: asort, sort, and zsort.

This is useful for e.g. text search. Text search will add a sort term on relevance. This relevance sort term is appended after any existing sort term. By using zsort you can force sub-sorting in case of the same relevance or no text for the query. Example:

{query cat='news' text=q.qsort zsort="-rsc.created"}

If q.qsort is empty, this will return the newest news items. If q.qsort is not empty then it will search for the text and return the best matches where equally matching news items will have the newest on top. Use asort instead of zsort to show the newest matching news, regardless on how well they match the search term:

{query cat='news' text=q.qsort asort="-rsc.created"}

Some sort fields:

• rsc.modified - date of last modification
• rsc.publication_start - publication date
• rsc.pivot_date_start - the start date specified in the admin
• rsc.pivot_date_end - the end date specified in the admin
• rsc.pivot_title - the title of the page. For multilingual sites, the behavior of sorting on title is undefined.
• seq - sequence number of the first edge (ignored if no edge is joined)
• edge.created - creation date of the first edge (ignored if no edge is joined)

For all the sort fields, you will have to consult Zotonic’s data model. Example sorting on modification date, newest first:

sort='-rsc.modified'

See also

Pivot Templates

custompivot

Add a join on the given custom pivot table. The table is joined to the primary rsc table: custompivot=foo (joins the pivot_foo table into the query)

The pivot tables are aliassed with a number in order of their occurrence, with the first pivot table aliassed as pivot1. This allows you to do filtering on custom fields like this:

{query custompivot="pivotname" filter=["pivot1.fieldname", `=`, "hello"]}

See also

Custom pivots

hasobjectpredicate

Filter on all things which have any outgoing edge with the given predicate:

hasobjectpredicate='hasdocument'

hassubjectpredicate

Filter on all things which have any incoming edge with the given predicate:

hassubjectpredicate='author'

text

Perform a fulltext search on the primary “rsc” table. The result will automatically be ordered on the relevancy (rank) of the result:

text="test"

Use prefix id: to find specific resources by id or name:

text="id:1000"

text="id:1000,1001,1002"

text="id:category,1"

query_id

Load the query arguments from the saved query resource:

query_id=331

See also

Query resources

qargs

Take all the arguments from the current request and use these. The arguments have to start with a q, for example:

http://example.com/search?qs=test&qcat=text

With the query:

m.search.paged[{query qargs page=q.page pagelen=20}]

Will find all pages containing the string test in the category text.

As qs is the usual text search argument in forms it is mapped to text. All other arguments have the q removed and should map to known query-model arguments.

publication_month

Filter on month of publication date

publication_month=9

publication_year

Filter on year of publication date

publication_year=2012

date_start_after

Select items with a start date greater than given value

date_start_after="2010-01-15"

It also possible to use relative times:

• now
• +0 sunday (last sunday or the current sunday)
• +0 monday (last monday or the current monday)
• +1 minute
• +1 hour
• +1 day
• +1 week
• +1 month
• +1 year

Negative offsets are allowed as well. There //must// be a + or - sign.

date_start_before

Select items with a start date smaller than given value:

date_start_before="2010-01-15"

date_start_year

Select items with an “event start date” in the given year:

date_start_year=2012

date_end_after

Select items with a end date greater than given value:

date_end_after="2010-01-15"

date_end_before

Select items with a end date smaller than given value:

date_end_before="2010-01-15"

date_end_year

Select items with an “event end date” in the given year:

date_end_year=2012

content_group

Select items which are member of the given content group (or one of its children):

content_group=public

name

Find resources with a matching unique name. A wildcard can be defined, for example:

name=page_*

Searching on an empty name or just * will return all resources with a defined name. The given name will be trimmed and converted to lowercase before searching.

language

Find resources with a certain language. The language must be a valid ISO 639-1 language code. Search terms with invalid language codes are ignored.

Find all resources with a German translation:

language=de

Filter behaviour

All of the filters work as AND filter. The only exception to this is the cat= filter: if you specify multiple categories, those categories are “OR“‘ed together, to allow to search in multiple distinct categories with a single search query.

Query resources

Query resources are, as the name implies, Resources of the special category query. In the admin this category is called “search query”. it is basically a stored (and thus content manageable) search query. You create an editable search query in an admin page that then is invoked from a template.

When creating such a resource in the page, you will see on the admin edit page an extra text field in which you can add search terms. Each search term goes on its own line, and the possible search terms are equal to the ones described on this page (the Query-model arguments).

See also

• mod_search reference: Zotonic’s built-in search module.
• mod_elasticsearch on using Elasticsearch with Zotonic.
• mod_search_solr on using Solr for search.