Search in selcted shelfs

[stothew]

Describe the feature you'd like

as you can search in books we would love to see a feature to search in a shelf or tick/untick shelves on the left corner of a global search.

Describe the benefits this would bring to existing BookStack users

this way you could filter the search and reduce the number of unwanted search results on bigger libraries.

Can the goal of this request already be achieved via other means?

no

Have you searched for an existing open/closed issue?

• [X] I have searched for existing issues and none cover my fundemental request

How long have you been using BookStack?

1 to 5 years

Additional context

No response

[ssddanbrown]

Thanks for the request @stothew,

Would just the addition of a search bar to the shelf, to search within, as per the books view, cover your needs? Providing a select/checklist for shelves within the search interface would require a lot of custom UI and handling to implement properly, which I don't think would be worth to be honest since there's been little other demand, but I could see some value in aligning book and shelf behaviour.

[stothew]

Thank you for the reply. The addition of a search bar to the shelf, to search within, would totally fulfill my needs! And yes, in my opinion, this would also add more consistency to the UI and enhance the freedom for own Data structures.

[helson22]

I also would like such a feature! I think it's a must :-)

[vincentbernat]

Any indication on how to implement this? I could help. I would like to be able to search in a book, but a shelf is also a good target.

[stothew]

for books, this already exists... If you select a specific/single book you get a search bar on the top left side menu to search only within this book. Anyway, I would still love to search on shelves. So feel free to help :)

[wavedeck]

Searching on shelves is a must if you have books with a similar title to other books in other shelves. I have to fight with that issue myself.

As pointed out in multiple other Issues, that have been closed in favor of this stale one, prioritizing such feature (maybe even in the means of adding it to a "help wanted" board) would be a massive functionality and UX improvement. I totally get it, why suggested compromises like adding the shelf name to the bread crumbs of the book would not be possible, because of the theoretical possibility of the same book being in multiple shelves. I do not do this, as do probably many others, but don't break what is already a core feature and the reason why someone, somewhere in this world uses BookStack over other solutions.

In regards to @stothew :

for books, this already exists... If you select a specific/single book you get a search bar on the top left side menu to search only within this book.

While it's true, that books have a dedicated additional search bar to search within a book, i don't think this is best for UI / UX anyways. The main search at the top center of the current BookStack frontend is a lot more prevalent to a user. If this feature gets implemented, it should also be considered to redesign the main search as a single source of truth. For example by having a small dropdown within the search bar where the user can specify between "all", "book" and "shelf", depending what part of the UI the user is currently at. this could also be enhanced in the future for in-page searches by highlighting the matching text within the currently viewed page.

[wavedeck]

however, to make it possible in the first place, a first step in the right direction would be to extend the search engine filters currently used in BookStack with a new option, to filter by a shelf slug (as the name of a shelf can be the same as another)

[mkniehl]

We are encountering the same issue and are considering a practical and effective solution. How about implementing a context-specific search box? When you're at the root level, the search would cover all shelves. if you're within a specific shelf, the search would be limited to books in that particular shelf. Additionally, the Advanced Search could be enhanced with an option to select multiple shelves?