Search Help

Search Pages

There are two search pages; WebSearch offers basic search features, while WebSearchAdvanced offers more control over searches.

By default searches are keyword based like in a typical search engine:

• Specify word(s) you want to find
• Multiple words form an AND search, intranet web service returns all pages that have the three words anywhere in the page
• Optionally specify plus signs for AND search, like intranet +web +service
• Enclose words in double quotes to form a literal search, like "web service"
• Specify a minus sign to exclude a word, like soap -shampoo
• Use double quotes if you want to search for a leading minus sign, like "-nowarn"
• Stop words are excluded from a keyword search:
  • Stop words are common words and characters such as "how" and "where", defined in the SEARCHSTOPWORDS setting in the TWikiPreferences
  • If you want to search for a word in the stop word list, prefix the word with a plus sign
• Example: To search for all topics that contain "SOAP", "WSDL", a literal "web service", but not "shampoo",
  enter this: soap +wsdl "web service" -shampoo

Regular expression search searches for a set of regular expression patterns:

• Patterns are separated by semicolons
• An AND search is performed for the list of patterns
• An exclamation point preceeding a pattern indicates an AND NOT search; use it to exclude a pattern, like !web service
• If you want to search for a semicolon or an exclamation point, escape them with a leading backslash, like \!shampoo
• Example: To search for all topics that contain "SOAP", "WSDL", a literal "web service", but not "shampoo",
  enter this: soap;wsdl;web service;!shampoo

Formatted Searches

You can embed a nicely formatted search in a topic by using the %SEARCH{}% variable described in VarSEARCH. Searches can be of different types; among others, TWiki offers keyword search, regular expression search and a flexible SQL-like query language.

Search TWiki Variables

TWiki Variables are text strings - %VARIABLE% or %VARIABLE{ parameter="value" }% - that expand into content whenever a topic is rendered for viewing. TWiki Variables are useful to create TWiki applications and workflows, but there are also variables for content creation such as %TOC% to show a table of content and %INCLUDE{}% to include another page.

You can search TWiki Variables.

Search Preferences

TWikiPreferences defines these search preferences:

• SEARCHDEFAULTTYPE: Default search type for search forms which calls the search script
  • Currently keyword
• SEARCHVARDEFAULTTYPE: Default search type for %SEARCH{} variable
  • Currenty literal
• SEARCHSTOPWORDS: List of stop words (common words and characters to exclude from a keyword search)
  • Currently a, all, am, an, and, any, as, at, b, be, by, c, d, e, for, from, g, h, how, i, i'm, i.e., in, is, isn't, it, it's, its, j, k, l, m, n, o, of, on, or, p, q, r, s, t, that, that's, the, this, to, u, v, w, was, wasn't, what, what's, when, where, who, who's, will, with, x, y, z, verbatim, literal

Related Topics: UserDocumentationCategory, WebSearch, WebSearchAdvanced, FormattedSearch, RegularExpression, QuerySearch, TWikiVariablesSearch