Fotoware search expressions reference

Describes "what to search for", i.e., a piece of information to match against.

A term may be a literal word or phrase to search for, a number or date value or a range of values given as terms.

Describes "where to search", i.e., the part of an object that is being searched.

By default, Fotoware performs a "full text search" in all metadata fields and attributes of an object. However, a predicate may limit the search to a specific metadata field or attribute.

Describes "how to search", i.e., the search query as a whole.

A clause may be a simple predicate, but it may also be a logical combination of multiple predicates using boolean operators such as AND, OR and NOT.

A word is a literal piece of text to match against.

Searching for single words normally does not require any special syntax. Sometimes, however, part of a word may have a special meaning in a search expression. Then, it is necessary to put the word into double quotes, and it becomes a phrase (see below). Phrases consisting of multiple words separated by spaces must also be placed in double quotes.

A word cannot contain spaces and characters with special meanings (delimiters), which are & | ( ) ~.

A word cannot be equal to a reserved word with a special meaning. Reserved words are and, or, not, to. Reserved words are case-insensitive.

The following characters have special meanings in certain cases:

• The hyphen is always interpreted as a NOT operator when it precedes a word, e.g., -cars. However, a hyphen in the middle of a word is always interpreted literally.
• The colon may be interpreted as a separator between a predicate and a term. It is interpreted literally only if the characters to the left of it do not have any special meaning. For an overview of all such cases, see the section about predicates.
• A word consisting of only digits and dots and starting with a plus or minus sign may be interpreted as a number. This depends on the context. For more information, see Searching for Numbers and Date/Time values.
• A word consisting of only digits, dashes, and some other characters may be interpreted as a date. This depends on the context. For more information, see Searching for Numbers and Date/Time values.
• A double-quote at the beginning of a word makes the word a phrase and requires a closing double-quote. See below for more information. However, it is allowed to search for words containing double quotes in the middle, such as abbreviations in Hebrew: רמב״ם.

Words may contain wildcards. It is not possible to search for a literal wildcard character, as they are always interpreted as wildcards. Wildcard characters are ? *.

Examples of words:

London
orange
notebook
austin*powers
201?
ABC-12345-xzy
John-Fredrik

The following expressions are NOT words and will be interpreted as something else:

New York
San Francisco earthquake

Each word (separated by spaces) is a separate term in the above expressions.

Tom&Jerry

In the above expression, "&" is a delimiter (a shorthand for the AND operator), so it separates the words Tom and Jerry and combines them to a clause.

2016-01-01

The above expressions are interpreted as date values or numbers, so they are not words. Each of them still is a single term, though.

and

The above expression is not a word because and is a reserved word (the AND operator). In isolation, this expression is invalid because the operator has no left and right operands.

-cars

The above expression is not a word because the hyphen is interpreted as a NOT operator, so this expression is equivalent to the expression NOT "cars".

A phrase is a literal string of Unicode characters to match against. Phrases are enclosed in double quotes. They can contain spaces, delimiters reserved words, and even literal double quotes.

Phrases have the same syntax as strings in the JSON language. This means that the backslash \ character has a special meaning. It denotes the beginning of an escape sequence. Escape sequences are documented below.

Phrases can contain wildcards (? *). Wildcards are documented here. It is not possible to search for a literal wildcard character, as they are always interpreted as wildcards. Wildcard characters are ? *.

Words and characters with special meanings in Index Manager search strings are automatically removed from phrases. This includes the words "and", "or", "not", "contains" and the characters % # ~ | ( ).

Examples of phrases:

"New York"
"fish and chips"
"Tom&Jerry"
"Austin \"Danger\" Powers"
"Austin*Powers"
"201?-??-??"

The following is not a valid phrase. It shows why proper escaping of user input is needed:

"Austin "Danger" Powers"

The following two phrases are equivalent because percent characters and the word "and" are removed by Fotoware:

"60% vodka and 40% milk"
"60 vodka 40 milk"

An integer or floating point number.

Numbers can be used as operands of ranges (see below).

Also, some predicates (such as fs - file size) expect numbers.

For more information, see Searching for Numbers and Date/Time values.

A date/time value in ISO 8601 format.

Dates can be used as operands of ranges (see below).

Also, some predicates (such as mt - modification time) expect dates.

For more information, see Searching for Numbers and Date/Time values.

2016-01-01T00:00:00
2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
2016-01-01T00:00:00+02:00
2016-01-01
2016-01-01Z
2016-01-01T12
2016-01

Note that the ISO 8601 standard allows date/time values consisting of only a year. However, the following term is interpreted as a number rather than a date/time value: 

2016

A date/time value in a search expression must therefore contain at least year and month.

A range specifies a pair of either numbers or date values. It matches all numeric values or date values which fall into the range.

The syntax of a range is:

min_value TO max_value

where "TO" is case-insensitive or

min_value~~max_value

The operands, min_value and max_value can be either date/time values or numbers.

Ranges are only allowed when searching in attributes or metadata fields that are of numeric or date/time type.

Dynamic tags can be used to insert dynamic text into a search expression that depends on various parameters, such as the current time or the current user.

Dynamic tags are only allowed:

• In the custom search string of a taxonomy item
• In the "Search for" field of the query of a smart folder

These search expressions are set up by users with permission to edit taxonomies or smart folders.

Using dynamic tags in any interactive search dialogs or in API requests is forbidden and makes the search expression either invalid or not match anything.

The general syntax of a dynamic tag is as follows:

{{namespace.name:field+|-duration|number}}

For more information, see Dynamic Tags.

Not all dynamic tags that can be used in metadata macros in actions can be used in search expressions. Furthermore, some tags have different behavior in actions and search expressions.

A backslash followed by any other character not listed in this table represents exactly that character (without the backslash). This is useful for

• Representing the backslash character (as double-backslash, \\)
• Representing a double quote (as a backslash followed by a double quote \")

since both of these characters have special meanings in a phrase. Examples:

"c:\\windows\\system32"
"Austin \"Danger\" Powers"

It is not possible to escape the wildcard characters ? and *. They are always interpreted as wildcards, and it is not possible to search for these characters literally.

Matches a term against all metadata and the filename of an asset.

The syntax is simply a term with no additions.

Matches a term against a single metadata field of an asset.

The syntax is as follows:

field_number:term

where field_number is an integer number, which specifies the metadata field.

Expression matches if both operands match.

The "AND" operator can also be omitted. If two clauses are put next to each other, they are implicitly combined using "AND".

The following examples all have the same meaning:

apples AND pears
apples & pears
apples pears

Expression matches if operand does not match.

The hyphen character (-) is not a delimiter, and it is interpreted literally when it appears in the middle of a word, e.g., John-Fredrik.

If the hyphen is to be interpreted as a NOT operator, it must be preceded by either a space or another delimiter character or appear at the beginning of a search expression.

The following examples all have the same meaning:

NOT apples
-apples

The following examples all have the same meaning:

apples AND -pears
apples AND NOT pears
apples NOT pears
apples-pears

Example of how to search for assets that do NOT have New York in the Title field (#005):

NOT 005:"New York"

 Searching for a Title field (#005) that is NOT empty:

NOT 005:""