Staff List Search – Text Search

WordPress Plugin Staff List Search – Text Search

Text search option requires some technical knowledge of relational databases including but not limited to LIKE and OR operators.

How a text search works.

  • Searching is case-insensitive unless your database has case-sensitive collation.
  • Database queries are run on each of the fields selected for filters.
  • Fields are not combined or merged. Each of the fields is searched individually.
  • Multipart field types contain up to six individual database fields. Fields are not merged when used for a search. Each one of them is treated as separate entity.
  • To get the match, at least one of the fields has to contain the search string.
  • There is no regular expression, fuzzy logic or partial matching. Only explicit matches will work.
  • Text search uses a LIKE operator in conjunction with two wildcards: LIKE '%string%'.

LIKE and wildcards (pattern matching).

Staff List text search uses a LIKE operator in conjunction with two wildcards (%) that represent zero, one, or multiple characters. This type of expression is more flexible than simple comparison operator FieldValue = 'string'.
Although the text that user enters in the search box must exactly match the content of the field, wildcard characters allow for it to be treated as a substring – arbitrary fragment of the character string.
For example, searching for mor creates SQL statement: WHERE FieldValue LIKE '%mor%'
and finds all strings that have mor in any position.
  • more
  • moral
  • humor
  • glamor
  • remorse
  • Memory, and so on.
Wildcard searches provide a flexible mechanism for searching for words or phrases that match a given pattern.

Text search – single field.

Text search – multi fields.

  • Fields are not combined or merged for search.
  • Each of the fields is searched individually.
  • At least one of the fields has to contain the search string to get the match.
  • Up to six fields can be searched for matches.
  • Search queries use OR operator.
A textbox filter for searching content of multiple fields.

Allowed field types.

Not all field types can be used as search fields. Allowed are:
  • Post Title
  • Sort Text
  • Single Line Text
  • Paragraph Text
  • Hyperlink
  • Email
  • Name Multipart 1-5
  • Address 1-6
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