Admin side search

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Current search facility is limited to one field at a time. A preferable 
approach is to make the default 'search everything' (within the context of the 
current panel) and then allow filtering if more specific results are required.

Aims of this may include:

* A single search box with popup filter, akin to like 
http://tympanus.net/Tutorials/UIElements/SearchBox/ but with all boxes selected 
by default.
* 'Memory' so the last-used checkboxes for each panel are remembered (per user).
* Option to automatically prepend 'all' to the passed list of search locations.
* Allow developers to utilise the core's search box on their own panels.
* Ability for plugins to chime in and add columns / search options.
* Fixes for the columns that are defined as Integer: alphanumeric searches 
always return 'true' if the database has a '0' in the column.
* Backwards compatibility with existing plugins that use the URL to filter as a 
link destination.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by stefdawson on 21 Dec 2012 at 3:11

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Status:

* Search box: Done and working using "or" searches between columns. CSS / 
markup tweaking in progress.
* Memory: ToDo.
* Prepend all: Done.
* Dev/Plugin/compatibility interaction: Done, in testing.
* Integer search fixed courtesy of (e.g.) "convert(on_frontpage, char)" in 
critsql.

Original comment by stefdawson on 21 Dec 2012 at 3:16

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Unsure if search can be improved to be more natural. For example, on the Users 
panel, searching for "publish" does *not* return all publisher accounts, 
whereas searching for "1" does because publisher accounts have privs '1'. This 
is counter-intuitive from an end-user perspective and unnecessarily exposes 
internal features of the database storage methods.

It's a feature of the fact the search maps what is searched on a one-to-one 
basis with the database. Perhaps search abstraction as part of a DB wrapper 
will allow intelligent conversion of typed-text-to-DB-data so more 'human' 
searches become possible more easily.

Original comment by stefdawson on 21 Dec 2012 at 3:23