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You can search pages, page titles, tags, and the text of attachments using Socialtext. Type the words you are looking for in the Search box in the top of the sidebar. A list of matching pages that contain ALL of the terms will be returned.
Searches are case insensitive and use Stemming . Matches are made on content containing the search term. That means that a search for "Magic Elixir" will match any search target containing Magic Elixir, such as Magic Elixir of Love and also Magic Elixir of Life.
Advanced searching
Search by phrase.
You search for a phrase by enclosing the phrase in double-quotes. For example, "end of quarter" will find all pages containing the exact phrase end of quarter.
Search by title.
To find a page with a particular title, start the search with title: For example, use title:help to find pages with "help" in the title. An equal sign is shorthand for title:. For example, =help to find pages with help in the title.
Search by tag.
You can search for tagged pages with tag:. For example, tag:"Ken's Blog" will return all pages with tags containing the phrase "Ken's Blog". Note that this is different than returning pages tagged exactly "Ken's Blog" .
Search with wildcards.
When searching for terms with plurals, suffixes, or irregular endings, you can use the wildcard * to match any variation of the end of the term. For example, child* will match "child", "childhood", '"childlike", and "children". Wildcards only work on the ends of search terms: foo*bar is not a wildcard search.
Exclude a term.
You can search for all pages except those containing a term by prefixing the excluded term with a minus sign. For example, meeting -agenda will find all pages that contain the word "meeting" without the word "agenda". History -tag:American will find pages containing the word history unless they have a tag containing the word American.
Combining search terms
Any of the three search types (keyword, title, tag) may be combined using the combining words AND, OR, and NOT. AND is the default for joining search terms. Note all caps. For example:
| Search | Meaning |
| Socialtext OR wiki | find pages containing either Socialtext or wiki |
| tag:Help Searching | find pages with tags containing the word Help also containing the word searching |
| tag:Help AND =Simple | find pages with tag containing the word Help and titles containing the word Simple |
| tag:"Ken's Blog" OR =Ken | find pages with tags containing "Ken's Blog" or pages with Ken in the title |
| tag:"in process" AND NOT tag:Completed | find pages with tags containing "in process" that have not been tagged with a tag containing Completed |
| Socialtext AND NOT SocialCalc | find pages containing Socialtext but not SocialCalc |
Grouping search terms
Parenthesis may be used to group search terms into larger search terms. For example, (tag:Ken OR tag:Barbie) AND (tag:Tom OR tag:Jerry) will find pages whose tags contain Ken and Tom, Ken and Jerry, Barbie and Tom, or Barbie and Jerry.
Search for (Shakespeare OR Milton) AND NOT Balzac will find pages with English poets but not French.
Inter-Wiki Search
You can search multiple wikis simultaneously by using the workspaces: term in your search query. workspaces: is followed by a comma-separated list of workspace identifiers (not titles). The workspace identifier is the string that is used in the workspace URL. For example, http://www.socialtext.net/example-workspace-identifier/index.cgi
When you supply a workspaces: term in your search, only those wikis in the list of workspaces will be searched; the current wiki is not searched unless it is in the list. No whitespace is permitted in the workspaces: search term.
You may also use workspaces:* to search all of the wikis of which you are a member. Note that the workspaces:* search does not search public wikis unless you are actually a member of such a wiki.
However, inter-wiki search performance depends entirely on the size and number of workspaces searched. If you try to search more than about 12 workspaces, the server may time out. If it does, the only thing to do is reduce the scope of your search.
Results of inter-wiki searches are limited to those pages to which you would normally have read access. If you search a wiki where you are not authorized to read pages, you will get no search results. If you search a wiki where you are able to read pages, you will get search results.
Inter-Wiki Search Examples
workspaces:accounts-payable,accounts-receivable,accounting AND tag:"Your Name"
(tag:overdue OR ="Problem Account") AND workspaces:delinquent-accounts,accounts-receivable
Stemming
All search indexes are built and searches performed using stemming. Stemming indexes and searches on the roots of words. For example, if you search for the word "walk", the search engine will also find "walked" and "walking". Stemming may not always work the way you anticipate - there are many different stemming schemes, some linguistic, some syntactic. For example, "walker" does not stem to "walk" because walker is a noun and walk is a verb.
The stemming feature is currently configured for English only.
RSS feed for search
The search results are available as an rss feed. You can do a search, and then if you would like to subscribe to it in your rss reader, click on the orange button next to the search results.
Unplugging the search result
The search results can be viewed off-line by using the unplugged feature. For more information see Working offline with Unplugged . Click the blue button next to the search result title at the top of the list.
Advanced formatting: Including a search inside a page
You can quickly and easily build dashboards monitoring activity throughout your workspace by including dynamic searches inside your pages. From Advanced mode, use any of the following elements, or use the Insert... menu in Simple mode to insert a search element and fill in its content. Any of the search types and formats noted above may be included in a search embedded in a page.
Note: all searches ignore case. The searches are recalculated whenever a page is opened or saved.
Keyword search
| {search comments} | list results of search for "comments" |
| {search <wikiwed> comments} | list results for "comments" in WikiWed workspace |
Keyword search, full - include page contents
| {search-full: comments} | include results of search for "comments" |
| {search-full <wikiwed> comments} | include results for "comments" in WikiWed workspace |
Title search
| {search: title:comments} | list pages with "comments" in title |
| {search: <wikiwed> title:comments} | list pages with "comments" in title in WikiWed workspace |
Title search, full - include page contents
| {search-full: title:comments} include pages with "comments" in title |
| {search-full <wikiwed> title:comments} include pages with "comments" in title in WikiWed workspace |
Viewing the search result
Your search results are displayed in the List View format. It shows all the pages where your search phrase had a 'hit'. The list is sorted by 'Relevance' (the default). Relevance is determined by the number of times the search term appears in the page, plus title and tags. Every instance of the search item (and any stems - see Stemming ) is highlighted in yellow with bold text in the pages' summaries. If you wish to see a more concise list, you can omit the summaries by clicking 'Titles' and toggling to the 'Titles' view.
You can change the way the list is sorted by using the 'Sort by' drop-down box.
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This drop-down box allows you to sort by the list by:
- Relevance - the use of the search term in the page, title and tags
- Title - alphabetically by the page title
- Last Edited By - alphabetically by the user name
- Date - in reverse-chronological or chronological order
- Revisions - by the number of times each page has been revised
When you choose a new category by which to sort, the default is by descending order; a list sorted by "Relevance" will start with the page with the greatest relevance rank, "Title" or "Last Edited By" will start from 'a', "Date" will be from the most recent, and "Revisions" will start with the page with the greatest number of revisions.
The drop-down box also lets you reverse the order of the current selection. For example, if the current view is by "Title" from A to Z, then you will also see "Title" with an up-arrow allowing the choice to sort by "Title" from Z to A. After selecting this, the drop-down box would then have as the extra item "Title" with a down-arrow. If you choose a different view, say "Date", you will see an item in the drop-down box showing "Date" with an arrow indicating to reverse (ascending or descending) the chronological order currently presented.
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