Searching

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You can search for elements anywhere you see this bar:

search

# Supported syntaxes

Craft supports the following search syntax:

Searching for… will find elements…
salty containing the word “salty”.
salty dog containing both “salty” and “dog”.
salty OR dog containing either “salty” or “dog” (or both).
salty -dog containing “salty” but not “dog”.
"salty dog" containing the exact phrase “salty dog”.
salty locale:en_us containing “salty” in the en_us locale.
sal* containing a word that begins with “sal”.
*ty containing a word that ends with “ty”.
*alt* containing a word that contains “alt”.
body:salty where the body field contains “salty”.
body:salty body:dog where the body field contains both “salty” and “dog”.
body:salty OR body:dog where the body field contains either “salty” or “dog”.
body:salty -body:dog where the body field contains “salty” but not “dog”.
body:"salty dog" where the body field contains the exact phrase “salty dog”.
body:sal* where the body field contains a word that begins with “sal”.
body:*ty where the body field contains a word that ends with “ty”.
body:*alt* where the body field contains a word that contains “alt”.
body::salty where the body filed is set to “salty” and nothing more.
body::"salty dog" where the body field is set to “salty dog” and nothing more.
body::salty* where the body field begins with “salty”.
body::*dog where the body field ends with “dog”.
body:* where the body field contains any value.
-body:* where the body field is empty.

You can alter the default behavior of search terms with the defaultSearchTermOptions config setting. See Enabling Fuzzy Search by Default (opens new window) for more info.

# Searching for specific element attributes

Assets, categories, entries, users, and tags each support their own set of additional attributes to search against:

  • Assets

    • filename
    • extension
    • kind

  • Categories

    • title
    • slug

  • Entries

    • title
    • slug

  • Users

    • username
    • firstName
    • lastName
    • fullName (firstName + lastName)
    • email

  • Tags

    • title

# Templating

craft.assets, craft.entries, craft.tags, and craft.users support a search parameter which lets you filter their elements by a given search query.

You can specify the search query in two different ways:

{% set query = craft.request.getParam('q') %}

{# Pass the search query directly into the search param: #}
{% set results = craft.entries({
  search: query
}) %}

{# Or pass it along with some custom search term options: #}
{% set results = craft.entries({
  search: {
    query: query,
    subLeft: true,
    subRight: true
  }
}) %}

If you go the latter route, note that the query property is required. Beyond that, all of the same keys available to the defaultSearchTermOptions config setting can also be used here.

# Ordering results by score

You can also set the ‘order’ parameter to 'score' if you want results ordered by best-match to worst-match:

{% set results = craft.entries({
  search: query,
  order: 'score'
}) %}

When you do this, each of the elements returned will have a searchScore attribute set, which reveals what their search score was.

See our Search Form tutorial for a complete example of listing dynamic search results.

# Rebuilding your Search Indexes

Craft does its best to keep its search indexes as up-to-date as possible, but there are a couple things that might render portions of them inaccurate. If you suspect that your search indexes don’t have the latest and greatest data, you can have Craft completely rebuild them with the Rebuild Search Indexes tool in Settings.