Excluding fields in a search

Question

Is it possible to exclude some fields when using search?

Getting the q parameter from the URL and searching the products section including all fields:

{% set query = craft.request.getParam('q') %}
{% set results = craft.entries.section('products').search(query) %}

This searches all fields, included those for "related articles" and "related products". I need to exclude those from the search.

Some experiments

Works to exclude hits in relatedProducts but limits the fields being searched to the productName field:

craft.entries.section('products').search('productName:'~ query ~' -relatedProducts:'~ query)

Does not work - also returns the product with a related product matching the query:

craft.entries.section('products').search(query ~' -relatedProducts:'~ query)

and the same when trying to include several fields before excluding relatedProducts:

craft.entries.section('products').search('productName:'~ query ~' OR productDescription:'~ query ~' -relatedProducts:'~ query)

Also tried searching just in the relatedProducts, confirming that it returns only the product with a related entry matching the query:

craft.entries.section('products').search('relatedProducts:'~ query)

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 10 '16 at 17:07

You can now use the attribute parameter in your search options, to set the fields the search term should apply to (feature introduced with Craft 2.5).

Unfortunatelly it's currently only possible to set a single attribute, but what you can do is to use the Preparse plugin to add a field to your elements where you collect / concatenate search terms from all relevant fields, then search in this field only.

The settings for your searchTerms Preparse field:

{{ entry.title }}
{{ entry.body }}
{{ entry.keywords }}

The search parameter:

{% set searchParam = {
    query: query,
    attribute: 'searchTerms'
    subLeft: true,
    subRight: true,
} %}

carlcs · Answer 2 · 2014-09-03T09:33:22.953

4

What about including only those fields you want to search:

craft.entries.section('products').search('productName:'~ query ~' OR productDescription:'~ query ~' OR productFoo:'~ query ~' OR productBar:'~ query)

Yep I know, it's not very nice (but hey, it was you who started listing them). What you could do to make this ugly thing of a search parameter more manageable is to add the conditions programmatically:

{% set searchFields = [
    'productName',
    'productDescription',
    'productFoo',
    'productBar',
] %}

{% set searchParam %}

    {% for searchField in searchFields %}
        {{- not loop.first ? 'OR' -}}
        {{- searchField ~ ':' ~ query -}}
    {% endfor %}

{% endset %}

{% set results = craft.entries.section('products').search(searchParam|trim) %}

edited Sep 03 '14 at 09:33

answered Aug 27 '14 at 13:59

carlcs

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Actually, I have tried that too. Specifically: craft.entries.section('products').search('productName:'~ query ~' OR productDescription:'~ queryand it also returns the product matching on relatedProducts. In fact it seems adding any OR in there makes it search every field. In the documentation, the OR examples searches for two different words, but always within the same field, like body:salty OR body:dog and body:salty -body:dog. So maybe this approach is not even supported. – oyvind-redrabbits Aug 28 '14 at 05:59
@oyvind tried it with success? – carlcs Aug 28 '14 at 06:02
Hit enter too early @carlcs - edit above :) – oyvind-redrabbits Aug 28 '14 at 06:04
Hmm.. that's no good. Did you try rebuilding your search indexes with that tool in the CP settings? – carlcs Aug 28 '14 at 06:06
@oyvind I just tested it and can confirm that it's not working. Seems like a bug to me though, that's why I did a bug report on g+. – carlcs Aug 28 '14 at 06:30
@oyvind tested the code with 2.2 and it now it works. – carlcs Sep 03 '14 at 09:34
Great @carlcs - also got an email notification from Brandon at Pixel & Tonic about the fix being included in 2.2 - great and super fast support as always. – oyvind-redrabbits Sep 04 '14 at 10:46
Does anyone know if this is working yet? – Clive Portman Aug 26 '15 at 16:06
@ClivePortman yes, having problems getting it working? – carlcs Aug 26 '15 at 16:11
@carlcs No, just wanted to check whether it was worth trying to use this. Thanks for clarifying. – Clive Portman Aug 27 '15 at 05:58
@ClivePortman ahh I see, it's not marked as accepted... People forget about that, I guess! – carlcs Aug 27 '15 at 07:31

Excluding fields in a search

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