The things you can do with search

Ah ok, still thinking if messages as discrete units like in the old system.

Cheers

I've added a few new options that will help make the events search better.

These only apply if a single type=event is supplied and no other type is specified.

It makes no sense to try and search for conversations by event properties... these options are for events only.

Namely, it is now possible to:

• Find events happening after a certain date
  
• Find events happening before a certain date
  
• Find events between certain dates
  
• Order the events with the oldest one first
  
• Order the events with the newest one first
  
  

Those 5 capabilities required two new query options, and to extend the sort one.

The two new options are eventBefore and eventAfter.

Those options can have values which are any of the following:

• A number, which is the count of days from today: -7 = last week, 0 = today, 7 = next week
  
• A date in ISO format, 2014-02-28
  
• A date and time in ISO format, 2014-02-28T14:00
  
  

These can be supplied in a myriad of ways:

• eventBefore=0 = Find all events that happened before today
  
• eventBefore=-31 = Find all events that happened before a month ago
  
• eventBefore=2014-01-01 = Find all events that happened before the 1st Jan 2014
  
• eventAfter=0 = Find all events that are happening after today
  
• eventAfter=31 = Find all events that are happening more than a month from now
  
• eventAfter=2014-01-01 = Find all events that happened (or are happening) after the 1st Jan 2014
  
• eventAfter=-7&eventBefore=0 = Find all events that happened in the last week
  
• eventAfter=0&eventBefore=31 = Find all events happening in the next month
  
• eventAfter=2014-08-01&eventBefore=2014-08-31 = Find all events that occurred in August 2014
  
  

The sort option has also been extended, and the two new options are available if your search result came from type=event only:

• sort:oldest = Show the oldest events first, order by the event date (not the date of the last comment)
  
• sort:newest = Show the newest events first, order by the event date (not the date of the last comment)
  
  

What this means, is that very shortly I'll add form controls to the search page to make it easier to find events that are about to happen, or that have just happened... I doubt many people will be searching for more complex scenarios but they are possible.

These things are best demonstrated... here is a link that will forever find events that have occurred within the last week, as well as all events into the future, and it then orders all of those events by the date showing the oldest first so it's like an agenda of upcoming events:
https://www.lfgss.com/search/?type=event&eventAfter=-7&sort=oldest

Search has changed.

You can still do everything I've described as it's the same engine.

But... you won't be shown all of the complex advanced stuff on the pages.

They'll still be applied, they're still in the query string (you can still share search results), but if there is an option in the right hand bar that understands it, then that is where it can be manipulated.

Not all options are available right now... so some you may have to type into the search box. i.e. the eventBefore and eventAfter options above.

But soon all options will be available in the side bar.

Oh... and searching for just one type of thing will start given you new options relating to that, do a search for type:event to see what I mean.

BTW... do we like search yet?

Is it fast enough?

Is it good enough at finding things quickly?

Are the options useful?

I like it. I am happier now that you hide all the nasty syntax (power user porn) under a UI. Bit odd that the displayed filter for upcoming events is still geeky though. Surely "Last 7 days" is better than "-7"

Bit odd that the displayed filter for upcoming events is still geeky though. Surely "Last 7 days" is better than "-7"

Those options can be weird than you think... you could do a search that is "Show me events that have occurred 2 months ago", and make it such that it always works relative to "now": eventAfter=-62&eventBefore-31.

I could render them as "eventAfter = 7 days ago" and "eventBefore = 7 days in the future"... but it starts getting weird.

What I intend to do is to map them to dates, and whilst the search would always work with the relative values, they'd be rendered as absolute search options.

Then they're easy to edit.

The relative searches are pure power user... really only useful for saved URLs.

The absolute searches are what people will be using through the filters... with a nice date picker and everything.

Yep sounds good.

Also, "event ordered by date ascending (a-z)" and the other one for decsending are not intuitive.

What about "event ordered by date ascending (oldest first)"?

Not sure if that is even correct, such is the non intuitiveness.

Those phrases are horrible, and they clash with the fact that you can already order by last commented date.

Also... "newest" includes events which have dates that are TBD, so it's not even true to say "newest first" as it's actually "planned and newest first".

I looked around the web, trying to find examples of search filters... and realised the biggest use-case is within Meetup.com, Eventbrite, Ticketmaster, Amazon (for products, etc) and so one. Event/Ticket sites, or product sites.

The big conventions are:

1. "Date (up arrow|down arrow)" - used on tables
   
2. "Date ascending|descending"
   
3. "Date A-Z|Z-A"
   
   

All of our attempt to use "oldest" and "newest" were negated by everyone using "Date (order)". We chose the long-form words and put in the alpha descriptions for those likely to be confuddled.

Not surprised that you did research.

But, I still could not tell you the mean of ascending/descending or a/z with reference to dates with any level of confidence.

I suppose a-z makes a bit more sense since it give an obvious idea of beforeness and afterness.

Sucks though.

I still think that

A-Z (Oldest first)
Z-A (Newest first)

would be better.

Newest meaning the one with the most recent update/comment? Or the event that is farthest into the future of the events?

Are those sorting by event date, or by last modified date?

Now you know my problem.

Though the A-Z could be replaced with Jan-Dec
And the Z-A with Dec-Jan

"do we like search yet?"

Not sure. I've just wanted a phone number from the relevant thread, but cannot search that thread by user name.

Incompetence may well be involved on my behalf.

That is a bit I need to work on still... it's one of two bits that is a pain in the arse.

In the search box for the thread authorId:47686 where that number is the person's profile ID (from the URL of their profile page).

It will be possible to just enter a username using something like @profilename soonish. It might not be precisely that, because then you can never search for mentions... but it will be a lot easier than knowing the profile ID.

Now you know my problem.

Yes, I see that now.

Though the A-Z could be replaced with Jan-Dec
And the Z-A with Dec-Jan

That sounds like a good plan.

Also, the quick search buttons sitting in with the filter check boxes, has confused me a bit.

I searched for "Ride", then filtered by event. Then, upon noticing the quick search button for "all upcoming", presumed it was a filtering button and hit that. Result: loss of my search term.

Yeah, the quick searches are examples only... convenience tools.

Because of the number of options, trying to make the pre-programmed searches work with various options you may have already specified, without affecting those options, isn't going to work.

Maybe "Quick" is the wrong name... the functionality isn't going to change, so perhaps these should be something else. Though not "Saved Searches" as that will be used by something else in the future.

The fun thing with "Jan > Dec" is that in rtl languages, the interface now says the exact opposite of what it does in both cases.

I am sure lovefilm or lovefilm.com has been mentioned on here but the search yields no results.

How about this search?

If you follow the link and then look at the right sidebar, you can see which boxes I (un)checked to get that.

By default searches are against the titles only.

Uncheck that on the right to delve into comments.

If you're searching only events, you can now filter the results to only show those which you are attending or have attended: attendee:true.

On hashtags - I just clicked through on one #friendliestforumontheinternet and as expected it took me to a preloaded search page, however when I then tried to use the filters on the right it said that no valid search term had been selected, is this expected behaviour? I would have thought I could example at least sort differently etc.

I have just resolved this, but your browser might still be caching the old version.

On the search results page, if you CTRL+F5, you should notice it working now.

Perfect...

I can now find the first mention of #margaretthatcherspenis

And of course you can add author to that mix:

sweet type:comment type:conversation id:253146 authorId:47686

Which now finds all comments that contain the word "sweet" within conversations that have the id of 253146 and in which the comments are authored by 47686 (me).

It doesn't return anything if you don't have a search term at the beginning ("sweet") so is it possible to find eg. all comments by a user in a conversation?