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Text Search

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On the record list view it's possible to perform text search.

The field list, which is used in filtering, can be configured at Administration > Entity Manager > Edit specific entity type > Text Filter Fields.

It's possible to use the wildcard *.

Text Search

There is an option to use 'contains' operator for varchar fields by default. Parameter is available at Administration > Settings. Note that it can affect performance.

To disable previous search suggestions, uncheck the checkbox at Preferences > Misc > Disable text filter storing.

Global Search performs a search in multiple entity types simultaneously.

The list of entity types used in Global Search can be configured at Administration > Settings > Global Search Entity List.

The field list which is used in filtering can be configured at Administration > Entity Manager > Edit specific entity type > Text Filter Fields.

Global Search

Provides the ability to perform much faster and comprehensive text search.

Full-text search can be enabled for a specific entity type at Administration > Entity Manager > Edit specific entity type > Full-text search.

After enabling full-text-search, running rebuild is required. If you have many records, it's recommended to run rebuild from CLI: php rebuild.php.

Full-text search is always applied in the Global Search (for entity types with enabled full-text search).

Full-text search is also applied when you search in the list view. Though it can be skipped for some search queries. Yet, it's possible to force a full-text usage by prepending ft: to the search query.

The following operators are available:

  • + A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present.
  • - A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present.
  • (no operator) The word is optional, but the rows that contain it are rated higher.
  • * The truncation (or wildcard) operator. Appended to the word to be affected.
  • " A phrase enclosed within double quotes must be contained literally, as it was typed.

Minimum word length

The MySQL option ft_min_word_len defines a minimum word length available for full-text search. By default, it's set to 4. You might want to set it to 3 to be able to search shorter words.

If you change this parameter in MySQL, you also need to run rebuild in Espo.

Stopwords

MySQL has a list of stopwords that are ignored by full-text search. E.g. hello.

Autocomplete

When full-text search is enabled, autocomplete in link fields may not show suggestions until you type a full word. To have suggestions work for word parts, you can enable the parameter that will append the wildcard operator automatically for autocompletion queries. Administration > Settings > Append wildcard in quick search.