Item2445: Webless FORM and TOPICPARENT make searching very clumsy

This bug report describes the failure of finding topics with a data form attached, where the form definition is located in a subweb. Query search fails, regex search does find results.

UPDATE: the problem occurs as soon as a topic refers to the form definition topic as Web.FormDefinitionTopic, and the meta data gets:

META:FORM{name="Sandbox.QuickReferenceForm"}
META:FIELD{name="Title" attributes="M" title="Title" value="My title"}

END UPDATE

Assume:

• a subweb SDO in Sandbox
• a form definition QuickReferenceForm in subweb Sandbox/SDO, for instance:

  | *Name*  | *Type* | *Size* | *Values* | *Tooltip message* | *Attributes* |
  | Title | text | 80 | | title | M |
  

• the form is listed in Sandbox/SDO.WebPreferences
• you create a new topic QuickRefDataTest, and add the form, and fill in some values, and save
• the topic metadata now says:

  META:FORM{name="Sandbox/SDO.QuickReferenceForm"}
  META:FIELD{name="Title" attributes="M" title="Title" value="My title"}
  

(percentages removed here to be able to save topic)

Now create a search:

%SEARCH{
type="query"
"QuickReferenceForm"
format="   * [[$web.$topic][$topic]]"
web="all"
}%

This does not find anything.

Compare this to regex search:

%SEARCH{
type="regex"
"[Q]uickReferenceForm"
format="   * [[$web.$topic][$topic]]"
web="all"
}%

This finds the one topic.

-- ArthurClemens - 02 Dec 2009

Isn't the problem that Query search does not search in Meta?

And is that a bug?

There is a syntax for query search for the form name.

Crawford am I interpreting the query search spec right.? I.e. a simple "Textstring" as search string in query search only searches the text = text without meta.

Arthur does it work if you change the query search to use the syntax for finding a form name? I.e. use this instead

%SEARCH{
type="query"
"form.name ~ '*.QuickReferenceForm'"
format="   * [[$web.$topic][$topic]]"
web="all"
}%

The that I used wildcards for the form name so it can find the form both with and without a prefixed web name.

-- KennethLavrsen - 04 Dec 2009

Yes, it does work using form.name.

-- ArthurClemens - 05 Dec 2009

I hate to have to say this, but that's not a bug in query search. The definition of %META:FORM allows for either Web.Topic or Topic alone. In the case it's Topic alone, the "current" web is implied - whatever the "current" web may mean. Query search just does a string match - it has no semantic information about form.name, so cannot extend a "simple" topic with a web name.

The only solution to this is to drop the name="Topic" form of the meta-data. And I never figured a way to do that cleanly.

Note that the same problem exists with the TOPICPARENT meta-datum.

The workaround is to use the 'like' operator e.g. form.name~'*QuickReferenceForm' - which may pick up unintended forms, but if the best I can offer.

I changed the headline (it was "Query search does not find a topic if its form definition reference is Web.FormDefinitionTopic") and reduced priority to Normal. This is not a release blocker (been there since before QuerySearch was invented)

-- CrawfordCurrie - 05 Dec 2009

We also have got the match operator as well. Best for now is to use form.name =~ '\bQuickReferenceForm\b' This matches a word inside the form name spec. This pattern is also used very often to search for items in a coma-separated lists stored in formfields. More user-friendly would be a contains operator.

-- MichaelDaum - 03 Jan 2010

Duplicate of Item10813 which is closed as a doc fix, see also Item10484

-- PaulHarvey - 10 Aug 2011