GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 311060
field search/advanced queries with beagle-search
Last modified: 2018-07-03 09:52:53 UTC
It would be nice to have the possibility to do complex/advanced queries using a more advanced interface than just a text field. By advanced queries, I think about searching on specific fields, like the mime type, the size, author, or modification time. The attached screenshot gives an idea. This is similar to the evolution dialog for adding rules. Such advanced property based queries could also be done using a specialized syntax, like date:yesterday kind:image. Ok, I have seen this somewhere ;-)
Created attachment 49487 [details] Field based query interface example.
keyword searches are supported by beagle (e.g. to search for author 'jon', use beagle-query dc:author=~jon). beagle-query can perform search based on specific fields, Best doesn't have the capability yet. It wont be difficult to extend the capability to Best except one problem : Currently the various fields are named in a weird way e.g. author is under the field "dc:author", jpeg exif camera-model as "exif:Model", mp3 artist under "fixme:artist". If there was a descriptive field associated to each such field then that description can be used in the interface.
Created attachment 50546 [details] [review] patch for keyword based query from best Added support to query in best using keywords like author/artist/title etc. The patch basically uses the query syntax from beagle-query to query keywords. The GUI design is not great and should be looked after by some GUI design expert. Also I added only some of the common fields. If the patch gets accepted, all/most of the common fields can be added. Support for querying via date still needs to be done.
Comment on attachment 50546 [details] [review] patch for keyword based query from best Oho. With the changes in "more query hacking" commits, the patch wont work.
adjusting summary to be about beagle-search rather than best.
Beagle is not under active development anymore and had its last code changes in early 2011. Its codebase has been archived (see bug 796735): https://gitlab.gnome.org/Archive/beagle/commits/master "tracker" is an available alternative. Closing this report as WONTFIX as part of Bugzilla Housekeeping to reflect reality. Please feel free to reopen this ticket (or rather transfer the project to GNOME Gitlab, as GNOME Bugzilla is deprecated) if anyone takes the responsibility for active development again.