[4.0][RFC] Make the search-filter in the article-view more flexible

[hgh-esn]

The act. state

In the Joomla-backend, there are much ways to filter the listview. Some are selectable by various dropdown-fields, others could be filtered by some keys written direct to the searchfield (inline-filters) - as: id:nn (nn=article-id) title:xxxxxx (xxx=mating string to the article-title)

Planes to expand inline search-filters

When working with Joomla in the backend, I find it extremely comfortable to have more matching possibilities like:

• filtering the articles by a "comma separated" list like ID:id1,id2,id3
• filtering the articles by an area like ID:id1-id6 (a short way for ID:id1,id2,id3,id4,id5,id6)

id1....6 can be any unique article ID.

• filtering the articles by title-strings

This is useful, if your article have titles following name-conventions

If there are titles like this:

art_str-a_str-b_str-c_str-d you can list only articles

with str-a AND str-c (by title:str-a,str-c) or str-b AND str-c (by title:str-b,str-c) or str-c AND str-d (by title:str-c,str-d)
in its title

Expected result

In all cases, the articles matching to the search-keys in the "comma separated" or the "area" list are shown in the listview. They can be still combined with the other dropdown-filters.

In all ways, only the articles, matching to all active filters will be listed.

What to change

To build in this, there must be done this core-changes:

/administrator/components/com_content/models/articles.php

• (build in the new matching-strings and necessary workcode)

/administrator/languages/en-GB/en-GB.com_content.ini

-(change COM_CONTENT_FILTER_SEARCH_DESC for new description)

Actual result

The result of the change will expand the search-inline-filters by:

id:id1,id2,id3,... for a comma separated article-list id:id1-id99 for an article-list with ids in range from 1 to 99

System information (as much as possible)

Can be build into any act. Joomla-Version - (best in J4)

Additional comments

I'm running this changes in my one Joomla-environment under J3.9.20 and it works well. In the add. files I have some screenshots to look to.

My question

Is this wished to be build in into Joomla4?

[hgh-esn]

Add some screenshots.

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[brianteeman]

If you have the code then please submit a pr. It will have to be for J4 as it is a new feature and J3 is not taking any new features.

Thanks in advance

[hgh-esn]

Hi guys, after checking the basic-code in J4, I found that the db-access code is different to J3. So I must do some new codings and tests before setting up the code here. I'm working!

[Fedik]

Before someone begin.

id:id1,id2,id3,... or id:id1-id99

this is okay

title:foo,bar

this is not good, it limits possibility to search title that contain the comma (or other symbol)

[hgh-esn]

title:foo,bar In this case we can do something like this:

title:foo,,bar

if the search goes to 'foo' AND ',bar'.

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[Fedik]

if the search goes to 'foo' AND ',bar'.

what if User want to search , or Foo, bar.

upd: if you meant use ,, as separator it also not helps, User may want to search title where he has a typo with two ,,. In my experience such magic with text search, never works good.

[hgh-esn]

Hi is there any char that can not be used in the title of an article?

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[Fedik]

hm, can be absolutely anything that User able to copy/paste, I think.

One of possible idea, is to use another "prefix" for the complex search, where we can "say" that some symbols cannot be searched, something like: title_query:foo,bar search title with foo OR bar title_query:foo&bar search title with foo AND bar In this case symbols , & will not be possible to search with title_query: prefix, but possible with title:

So existing title:foo, bar will work as usual, will search for title with foo, bar

[hgh-esn]

@SniperSister Hello David, I found this post from you: https://forum.joomla.de/thread/7807-joomla-db-api-frage-zu-prepared-statement-versus-plumpem-typecasting/?postID=53810#post53810

So I think you can help me.

I want to update the joomla inline-search in the article-view. For that I have made a test-solution in my J3.9.xx environment and it works well. When transferring this to J4-Beta-x I found a new way to make the sql-queries as you described in that forum-post before. Therewith I have some problems.

Let me explain:

In the search field I have this value:

id:1,3,5

That should show only the articles 1,3,5 in the listview. It works well with this hardcoded code:

$query->where('('   .$db->quoteName('a.id') .' = :search0'
        .' OR ' .$db->quoteName('a.id') .' = :search1' 
        .' OR ' .$db->quoteName('a.id') .' = :search2)')
    ->bind([':search0', ':search1', ':search2'], $array);

array is an array with this values:

Array ( [0] => 1 [1] => 3 [2] => 5 ) 

To make the code flexible, I have to generate the query by php, depending of the content in the search field. For that I have this code:

$input  = $db->escape(substr($search, 3));          //string from searchfield-pos3 into workfield and escaping
$array = preg_split('/(\.\s?|,\s?)/',$input, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);  // create an array of the input-data

foreach($array as $key => $val) 
{
    if ($key == 0)
    {
        $qry = 'a.id = ' .$val;
        $where = "\$db->quoteName('a.id') " .'= :search' .$key;
        $bind  = "':search" .$key ."'" ;
    }
    else
    {
        $qry    .= ' OR a.id = ' .$val;
        $where  .= " OR \$db->quoteName('a.id') " .'= :search' .$key;
        $bind   .= ', ' ."':search" .$key ."'";
    }               
}

$qry contains the query for the earlier used sql-syntax.

&qry   a.id = 1 OR a.id = 3 OR a.id = 5

$where contains the query-syntax for the new where-statement.

$where  $db->quoteName('a.id') = :search0 OR $db->quoteName('a.id') = :search1 OR $db->quoteName('a.id') = :search2

$bind contains the query-syntax for the new bind-statement.

$bind [':search0', ':search1', ':search2']

Before execution, $bind must be more prepared to:

$bind .= '[' .$bind .'], $array';

Then setting up the query to:

$query->where('(' .$where .')')
     ->bind($bind);

When executing this code it results in an error:

Too few arguments to function Joomla\Database\DatabaseQuery::bind(), 1 passed in /var/www/web26859828/html/J4.0_Beta1/administrator/components/com_content/src/Model/ArticlesModel.php on line 511 and at least 2 expected

Note!: line 511 is the position where the "->bind($bind);" statement stays.

And now my question: After experimenting now for to days I have no idea to locate the error.

Do you have any idea? I'm a german guy, may be it it easier to discuss this in german.

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[SniperSister]

@hgh-esn ->bind() needs at least two arguments: $key and $value, you are only passing one leading to the error.

You have two options here:

a) Multiple bind() calls: Call bind() in each iteration of the foreach loop: $query->bind(':search' . $key, $val)

b) One single bind() call: Build an array of all keys and an array of all values: $keys = [":search0", ":search1", ":search2"]; $values = ["value for 0", "value for 1", "value for 2"]; $query->bind($keys, $values);

Option a) is the cleaner one in my opinion

[HLeithner]

The right way is to use $query->whereIn() if possible or if you want to bind array you can use $query->bindArray()

From the function description of whereIn() https://github.com/joomla-framework/database/blob/4cda5d73eb55ac8a596f261aac08a33d658421fb/src/DatabaseQuery.php#L1859-L1876

this function uses internally the bindArray() function https://github.com/joomla-framework/database/blob/4cda5d73eb55ac8a596f261aac08a33d658421fb/src/DatabaseQuery.php#L1972-L1990

[brianteeman]

@high-esn have you abandoned this?

[hgh-esn]

Hi Brian,

... have you abandoned this? no I haven't, but I actually have less time to finish it. I have the basic code running in my private Environment. But there is a lot of work to do to make it saver by a better error handling in combination with the language support.

If you or some other developer is interestet to have a look, let me know by email. I will make an account to the environment possible.

greetings HGH

Sent by HGH Mobil

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--- Original-Nachricht --- Von: Brian Teeman Betreff: Re: [joomla/joomla-cms] [4.0][RFC] Make the search-filter in the article-view more flexible (#30175) Datum: 13. November 2020, 9:03 An: joomla/joomla-cms Cc: hgh-esn, Mention

@high-esn have you abandoned this?

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[fancyFranci]

Hey @hgh-esn, how is it going? When you need support, a draft PR is helpful, so we can have a look at your code. Otherwise it seems the topic is abandonded and we should close the issue.

[fancyFranci]

I'm closing this issue now, but feel free to provide your feature at https://github.com/joomla/rfc as soon as you have the motivation to work on that topic again :)