Search page help

[SteveM]

Since I've made a few changes recently to the search page, I thought I'd see if I can document some of the hidden features.

All the advanced search features can now be accessed via the search text box without opening the advanced section. Also, when you select one of the advanced options, it shows you what the typed text command would be for that search.

• genre:"genre to search" (must be quoted if it contains spaces)
• year: numeric year or 'new', this also allows regular expression strings for numbers, eg. 200[3-5] for 2003-2005 or 19(7[7-9]|80) for years 1977-1980
• country: 2 letter country code. This also allows multiple country codes, in parentheses separated by a bar, eg. country:(us|mx|ca) for North America
• avg: numeric value 0-5 for the average rating of all listeners, the search results can vary +/- 0.25 from the selected value. rated: is a synonym for avg:.
• my: numeric value 0-5 of your own ratings, the search results can vary +/- 0.25 from the selected value. You can also use this to select a random list of your rated and not recently played songs by using the format my:4.5x12 for your rated 4.5 that has not been played in the last twelve months (this is similar to my:4.5 since:12 in:song, but the latter does not pick random selections from the results).
• since: numeric value in months since the artist/album/song was last played
• duration: numeric value in minutes for the duration of a song, optionally duration:<X (for less than X), >X (for greater than X), X-Y (for between X:00 and Y:59 minutes/seconds); A single value searches between X:00 and X:59 minutes.
• in: artist|album|song. choices for this are artist, album or song. These can also be combined to choose multiple sections when separated by a bar, eg. in:artist|album
• artist: "artist to search", if the artist is more than one word you must put it in quotes
• album: "album to search", if the album is more than one word you must put it in quotes
• votes: X OR <X OR X-Y OR >X, where X, Y are integers. For example: votes:>30, votes:15-20 or votes:<5
• modifiers You can use many of the regular expressions the help filter results, for example ^ is for begins with or $ is for ends with

These options can be combined to develop specific searches.

(Note: a space after colon is optional)


Examples:

• in:artist rush will deliver results Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush and Rush
• artist:yes year:197[4-7] in:album will deliver results Relayer and Going for the One
• my:4.5 in:artist country:^I ^M will deliver results of your artists from country codes that begin with the letter I, rated 4.25-4.75, that begin with the letter M
• in:song avg:2.5 since:60 will deliver songs rated 2.25-2.75 that have not been played in the last 60 months
• in:song my:5x6 will deliver songs you rated 5 that have not been played in the last 6 months
• in:album artist:"dream theater" will deliver results all Dream Theater albums
• camel (depending on which checkboxes are set) will deliver results for the word camel in the artist, album and/or song title.
• my:0 avg:4.5 in:albums will deliver a list of albums you have not yet rated, that have a 4.25-4.75 average rating.
• in:albums since:0 will deliver albums that have never been played

Another previously undocumented feature (and/or bug depending on results) is when there is one result in the artist box, the albums for the artist will be displayed as well, and if there is only one album in the albums box, the songs for that album are likewise displayed. This can be problematic when you are searching for multiple artists/albums/songs at the same time and if there is only one artist or album, the child box will be submitted for results from the parent item. An example would be searching 'Camel' with all the artist/album/song checkboxes set.

If you have ideas for other search options, let me know and I'll find out if it is possible with the data that we have.

Cheers,
Steve

[MAVIII]

Am I wrong or you/anyone can not find any Tribute albums by name? Only by the Bands that play
on them, this could be problematic if a Band is made up of various members of different bands .

Forgive if I'm wrong .

[SteveM]

If you know the name of the cover album (or at least a key word) you can search in:album jason becker will return a list of Various Artists - Warmth in the Wilderness - A Tribute To Jason Becker (cd1) and Various Artists - Warmth in the Wilderness - A Tribute To Jason Becker (cd2)

[arcarneiro]

Greetings and salvetations.


1st, would like to thank for all the efforts you've been putting on the progulus website and search system, SteveMeister. I really appreciate it.

now, on the problems side:

1 - There seems to be a "problem" on the album list of certain bands. For example, if you click on Saga, on the Artists box at the search page, on the albums list box will be all the albums of all artists that have Saga on the name, like the album Glue Works from artist Gösta Berlings Saga.
Not that this is a big problem, it's just that it becomes a bit mixed up.

2 - Bucko identified that it isn't listing the albums of bands Sandstone (IE) and Sandstone (PL).

Once again, thank you for all your hard work.

[SteveM]

Thanks for the debugging.

I've changed the query to fix the Sandstone (PL/IE) problem, which also fixed the Gosta Berlings Saga problem as well.

Please let me know if you find other problems or any new ones I introduced with the fix.

[scout]

since:6 my:5.0 no longer works, since yesterday,or maybe it's the random button .

[SteveM]

Yep, that was one I caused yesterday. It's now working. Thanks for the heads up.

Also you can use the shortcut method 'my:5x6'

[subphreeze]

Thanks SteveM for the great search features!

Do you have a query for song length?

Could you list all the modifier operands for queries here? For example, what would be the syntax of a search to find all songs that contain either the word 'pig' or the word 'robot'?

[SteveM]

Nice idea. I may have to add a filter for song length, maybe something like 'duration:9-12' for songs that range from 9 to 12 minutes, or duration:epic (or even duration:!epic for not epics)?

To find all songs that contain the word 'pig' or 'robot', try the following search: in:albums (pig|robot) to find all albums containing the word (or part of a word, since pigeons also showed up) 'pig' or 'robot')

I've also added a dropdown to help with searches, including auto-complete on some options.

[scout]

Wildcard searches:

There are two standard wildcards. "%" will search any character, "_" will search a single character. For example: bl%t will return results for "Blacklight", "Blanket of Night" and "Bloodlust"

searching "b__t" (two undescrores) will return "blot" "bast", "bent" and "boot"

"b__t%" will return results for "Be There", "Brother", "Bortom Hemom" etc. (searching: b, any two characters, t, followed by anything)

[scout]

options for number of votes:

votes: >#; votes:<#; votes:#-#

[pearldrums000]

[strikei]I know without using the advanced features there is a check box for random, but I don't think I've had that work for my advanced searches. So for example if I wanted to search my:5 I know that will produce a lot of results and it's just going to give me them starting with numbers then alphabetized and the page only generates so many results so I'll never see anything past H probably. Is there an option to return a random set of results in a random order?[/strike]

NEVERMIND. I think the random button works. It doesn't return in a random order, but does return a random set of results. And that's fine.