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    • 36173
    • 26 Posts
    Greetings and thanks to all in this community. smiley

    I have recently acquired SimpleSearch and have a question about search terms. By experiment it seems to reject any search term of less than three characters. It also seems not to behave itself when using quotations.

    Given that I will have to train clients (and preferring to spend time creating the solution rather than experimenting), I need to know how it works from the front end as a start. Does anyone have documentation on its behaviour?

    Cheers,
    Tim
      • 18373 ☆ A M B ☆
      • 3,141 Posts
      Have you tried the SimpleSearch docs? http://rtfm.modx.com/display/ADDON/SimpleSearch.SimpleSearch#SimpleSearch.SimpleSearch-AvailableProperties

      If you have any specific questions, perhaps that's something we can help with, but "its behaviour" is quite broad laugh
        Mark Hamstra • Developer spending his days working on Premium Extras and a MODX Site Dashboard with the ability to remotely upgrade MODX and extras to make the MODX world a little better.

        Tweet me @mark_hamstra, check my infrequent blog at markhamstra.com, my slightly more frequent ramblings at MODX.today or see code at Github.
        • 36173
        • 26 Posts
        Hi Mark,
        Yes I did of course try the document you mentioned-I am clear on the implementation piece and the documentation is complete that way.

        Perhaps it sounds simplistic, by behaviour I am asking for any limitations, features or requirements when the search feature is being used:

        - is there a limit on minimum or maximum number of characters? (my suspicion is 3)
        - can wildcards be used?
        - can quotations or plus signs be used?
        - any known anomolies or restrictions with search terms (e.g., the MODx universe does not want search starting with a "*" for example)

        I was hoping to confirm the above by way of documentation if available, but no luck. I am willing to experiment, and any thoughts appreciated.

        Tim
          • 36173
          • 26 Posts
          The buglist shed some light on issues with search terms:

          https://github.com/splittingred/SimpleSearch/issues/58
          moniarde opened this issue 3 months ago: When searching with only 2 characters (ie, an acronym of 2 characters, such as "fx"), search fails and result page shows an empty search string. When searching with 3 characters, results are inconsistent between search terms... [ed. note: timbodrumbo last edited this post 14 years, 7 months ago.]
            • 18373 ☆ A M B ☆
            • 3,141 Posts
            I thought there was a property to control the minimum amount of characters needed, but can't find it right now..

            These properties help defining how it searches:

            useAllWords
            maxWords
            searchStyle

            I don't think it has support for wildcard/quotes/etc.

            AdvSearch seems to offer more functionality (or at least more configuration options), though I haven't worked with it myself yet: http://rtfm.modx.com/display/ADDON/AdvSearch.AdvSearch
              Mark Hamstra • Developer spending his days working on Premium Extras and a MODX Site Dashboard with the ability to remotely upgrade MODX and extras to make the MODX world a little better.

              Tweet me @mark_hamstra, check my infrequent blog at markhamstra.com, my slightly more frequent ramblings at MODX.today or see code at Github.