Help talk:Searching

Phrase matching
Why doesn't the search support phrases? At the very least the search should return pages containing ALL the words first. The search functionality is inadequate.

At some point I plan to replace the Mediawiki built-in search with something that supports phrase matching.

24.128.140.97 - 16:40, 10 April 2007


 * @ At the very least the search should return pages containing ALL the words first. - I definitely agree! Are there any workarounds?
 * does Lucene Search help? - Thanks for hints, -- Achimbode 10:02, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Wildcard Search
What is the recommended approach of adding wildcard search. E.g. I would like to get the following to work Rab* would return Rabbi, Rabbit, Rabbits etc.... Many thanks --Markw21 12:32, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, like that, rab*. The asterisk seems to work only at the end of a word.--Patrick 12:51, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks Patrick, but it does not seem to work for me, I specifically have a document called Outages, but when I search for Outage or Outage* it does not find the document. (Mediawiki 1.9.2, PHP 5.2.1, MySQL 5.0.37) --Markw21 12:54, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I see now that you need to install the extension lucene search.--Patrick 15:40, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Is there anyway I can get wildcard searching working without having to install lucene, c#, mono, mcs. There seems to be various different methods, and I would like to pick an 'easy', commonly adopted method, that will not be broken by future releases of mediawiki.


 * Yes! Create a new file in include/ named SearchMySQL4SubString.php with following content:

db =& $db; }

function legalSearchChars { return "A-Za-z_'0-9\\x80-\\xFF\\-*?+"; }

/** @todo document */ function parseQuery( $filteredText, $fulltext ) { global $wgContLang; $lc = SearchEngine::legalSearchChars; $searchon = ''; $this->searchTerms = array;

wfDebug( "parseQuery filteredText is: '$filteredText'\n" ); wfDebug( "parseQuery fulltext is: '$fulltext'\n" );

# FIXME: This doesn't handle parenthetical expressions. if( preg_match_all( '/([-+<>~]?)((['. $lc. ']+)(\*?)|"[^"]*")/',                   $filteredText, $m, PREG_SET_ORDER ) ) {                  foreach( $m as $terms ) {                        if( $searchon !==  ) $searchon .= ' ';                        $searchon .= $terms[1] . $wgContLang->stripForSearch( $terms[2] );                        if( !empty( $terms[3] ) ) {                              $regexp = preg_quote( $terms[3], '/' );                              if( $terms[4] ) $regexp .= "[0-9A-Za-z_]+";                        } else {                              $regexp = preg_quote( str_replace( '"', , $terms[2] ), '/' ); }                       $this->searchTerms[] = $regexp; }                 wfDebug( "Would search with '$searchon'\n" ); wfDebug( "Match with /\b" . implode( '\b|\b', $this->searchTerms ) . "\b/\n" ); } else { wfDebug( "Can't understand search query '{$this->filteredText}'\n" ); }

$searchon = $this->db->strencode( $searchon ); $field = $this->getIndexField( $fulltext ); return " MATCH($field) AGAINST('$searchon' IN BOOLEAN MODE) "; } } ?>
 * Then add following lines in your LocalSettings.php

require_once( 'SearchMySQL4SubString.php' ); $wgSearchType = 'SearchMySQL4SubString';


 * And yes, it works with MySQL5 :)

--213.214.18.64 09:52, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks that works great, if there anyway to get it to always add the *, so the user wouldn't have to? --Markw21 11:43, 10 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh yes, you can change the function searchText in the SearchMySQL.php like that

function searchText( $term ) { $resultSet = $this->db->resultObject( $this->db->query( $this->getQuery( $this->filter( $term ).'*', true ) ) ); return new MySQLSearchResultSet( $resultSet, $this->searchTerms );
 * So the * is in the sourcecode and doesn't need to be inserted manually.
 * --213.214.18.64 12:27, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Automagically add wildcard to mediawiki search 1.18
I changed the following line in SearchMySQL.php: return $this->searchInternal( $term, true ); to: return $this->searchInternal( $term.'*', true );

I hope this info may be helpful to someone. 213.154.239.4 23:47, 28 March 2013 (UTC)


 * It might be better to do this addendum of asterisk inside the searchInternal function itself, right after the line "if ( trim( $term ) === ' ' ) return null;":
 * $term = $term . '*';

Automagically add wildcard to mediawiki search 1.22

 * In Mediawiki 1.22 you have to change the Lines 184 - 186 from:

if ( trim( $term ) === '' ) { return null; }


 * to

if ( trim( $term ) === '' ) { return null; } else { $term = $term. '*'; }


 * This works great for me on 1.24.2

protected function searchInternal( $term, $fulltext ) { // This seems out of place, why is this called with empty term? if ( trim( $term ) === '' ) { return null; }		else{ $term2 = $term. '*';			$term2 = str_replace(' ', '* *', $term2); $term .= ' '.$term2; }		...

It seems that the * in front of the term is not taken into account thus useless (I'm on 1.30)

Blank page after upgrade to 1.10
after upgrading to v1.10, this code gives me php errors and a blank page.

The error I get is:

[17-May-2007 13:07:34] PHP Fatal error: Cannot make static method SearchEngine::legalSearchChars non static in class SearchMySQL4SubString in C:\www\doc\includes\SearchMySQL4SubString.php on line 15

anyone know how to fix this? --Dingfelder 01:10, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * is there really a SearchMySQL4SubString.php in your include dir? this php is no standard and maybe you have to ceate it on your own --213.214.18.64 06:40, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * please read the instructions above for adding the wild card search... they specify to create this file and show it's contents. The reason I am posting is this code is now causing the problem after the upgrade     --Dingfelder 05:15, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I do not really know, why it works, but it works on my wiki (1.10) after changing the line (in the extension)

function legalSearchChars {

to

public static function legalSearchChars {


 * Thx, that made it work on 1.12 --80.109.49.190 13:06, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Update for 1.1X
It's also working with 1.11 :) Thank you work that great work!!!

Line 23: "function legalSearchChars {" -> "public static function legalSearchChars {"

--213.214.18.64 13:42, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Wildcard search doesn't work for 1.27
I'm trying to get wildcard search working on a new wiki. But after doing all of the above and changing all require_once lines to be of the form require_once( "$IP/includes/search/SearchEngine.php" ); require_once( "$IP/includes/search/SearchMySQL.php" ); in SearchMySQL4SubString.php and in my LocalSettings.php I get Call to undefined method Language::stripForSearch I tried changing it to stripForSearchCallback which is defined in search/SearchMySQL.php but no luck. Can anyone help?

Searchresults - jump to result by link
Is it possible to jump directly to a result found in a text? For example: I search for "computer", my result is a page where "computer" appears 200 times. The result I need is in line 1534. Can mediawiki create a link direct to this line in the text? --213.214.18.64 10:12, 10 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This would be nice for page history differences that involve particular sections; having direct links to the section(s) would be nice instead of having to scroll down on particularly long pages (like talk pages) in order to see the actual text. -Eep² 03:19, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Search for short word or abbreviations
Is it possible to make search also search world like "lvm". I got one article with word lvm in it but it gives me 0 results. However when I search for "logical" I get desired page. I'm 100% sure that everyone will search lvm not "logical volume manager". thank you
 * you could/should use redirects for that --80.109.49.190 13:07, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

3 character search?
I have just discovered that the search function does not give any results on words that have less than 4 characters. Is there a way to change that?

Hans Telgen 07:27, 6 July 2007 (UTC)


 * The answer is in the FAQ here. 199.67.140.153 14:32, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * To me, that FAQ entry raises more questions than it answers. It seems to suggest that possibility that only "older versions of MediaWiki" are affected.  Actually I can add further evidence for this possibility; I am an end user on a site running MediaWiki 1.21.1 and I do not face the 4 character minimum.  I assume these help pages are only supposed to document the latest version of MediaWiki, so we should not add anything to Help:Searching about this matter.  Open4D (talk) 13:10, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Search statistics
Is there a way to see what users are searching for? Some kind of statistics. thank you
 * eek! would be awesome. --Subfader 09:11, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Searching for Words with ä, ö and ü in it
We do administrate a German wiki using the MediaWiki-Software. When we post articles with the letters Ä, Ö or Ü in the title the search ever show an Error: "Ungültiger Titel". How can I fix this? --Ulli1105 10:33, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[RESOLVED] Go for other namespaces
I'd like the Go feature working for other namespaces, e.g. I enter "House" the Go button will take me to Category:House (if exists). It could be combined with the ns you define as default in your user prefs. --Subfader 19:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Solved for me by: Extension talk:GoToCategory --Subfader 09:10, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Quote problems
While I search for something like "O'Leary" it'll end up with 404 page :( Has anyone a fix for the quote ( ' ), so that it won't break my Mediawiki?

search ranking?
What is the ranking algorithm used in default mediawiki search, to display the search result? --Ans 10:40, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * By default mediawiki uses mysql fulltext search, which uses ranking only for multiple words searches, afaik. --Rainman 16:51, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * But the ranking is odd. When search multiple words the results seem to be very useless. Example: this is useful includes a result, followed by  . Nowhere are the 3 words in that order found as phrase. Shouldn't the first results be the same as if you searched in quotes? "this is useful" --Subfader 12:44, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Please note that www.mediawiki.org uses an earlier (and outdated) version of Extension:lucene-search because of pending hardware issue. If you have suggestion/comments about search ranking please refer to the latest lucene-search version as used on en, fr, de, es, pt, .. etc wiki . --Rainman 15:35, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * On a more general note, there are (at least) two type of queries: keywords and phrases. Your example is a phrase query, and it is appropriate to have the phrase be the first hit. However, for keyword queries (e.g. douglas adams book) one doesn't want to get an irrelevant article where those three words happen to be next to each other as a first hit. Of course, it is impossible to distinguish these two in all cases, so the search engine need to come up with smart ways of combining best results for both. --Rainman 15:39, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

search problems
Is there a way to search for a few letters in a word and wiki gives thw whole word? e.g. I type to the searchbox "wiki" and the whole word in a article is "Mediawiki". If i search for "Media*" then i'll get "Mediawiki" but i like to search for "*wiki" or only "wiki". Hope you understand what i mean. (23.02.2010)

Error?
I searched "Dogs" on my wiki and got no results, even though I have a file named "R3 Dogs.png". This is definitely a problem, as searches should lead to what they are.--99.181.164.155 00:52, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Go / Search
The wording of this article needs to change to describe current (beta Vector) functionality for Searching - there are no Go / Search buttons anymore so this doesn't describe current mediawiki version functionality. Superman57 23:00, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Disregard that page change I made please, I edited the wrong site. :/

Only searching for exact results - Why?
When I use the search function I never get any results at all, except when I search for the exact name of the article. However I would like the search to display every article related to the search word. E.g. when I search "game" I would like to be shown all articles that have the words "game", "games" and similar in the title. The only thing I get it suggestions to create an article called "game" in this case. Can anybody please explain in "beginners" terms how I can change that? Thank you :) --MeikKebza 17:41, 09 June 2011


 * I'm experiencing the same problem, only the exact wording result, puzzling... any solution? --Sunjizu (talk) 17:23, 25 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Sunjizu, can you provide a specific word you are searching for and the existing pages that are present but not being found? It might be related to:
 * the 3 letter short indexing limitation or
 * short word list.
 * spaces or underscores in the string


 * Sunjizu, If you click on the Search glass icon without any search term entered, you will be presented with a screen to enter your search term like "game". The results you get back will include pages named game and other pages with the name game in them.

Using quotations to match phrases?
Is it possible to search for phrases like the following, "simple phrase". It doesn't seem to work at all.

I know this was asked above, but no one provided an answer (and this was from 2009!). It'd be awesome if there was a way to do this.

-- Dana (24sep2012)

The search is not case-sensitive, so "MediaWiki", "mediawiki" and "MEDIAWIKI" all give the same result.
What? Since when? I was pretty sure Extension:TitleKey was required for that. Please confirm. If this is now core functionality, please indicate in which version this was implemented; I have searched the last 8 or so versions' release notes and I find nothing. Thanks!

--Mathieu ottawa (talk) 13:26, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, that's probably a mistake. --Nemo 13:27, 30 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Or maybe now (version 1.25wmf18 (2c93d82) 2015-02-19T02:47:27) it is case insensitive? For example a search for $wgvectorusesimplesearch brings up a page with the term in mixed case. I have my own Mediawiki version 1.23 and am continually confused over some results sometimes. For example, a search for "done" gets no hits, even though there are pages with "done" on it. If anyone can provide clarity on this it would be much appreciated. Kmacdowe (talk) 19:41, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Include search results in wiki page
Is it possible to include search result in a normal wiki page (instead of Special:Search), alternatively customize the search result page?

What I would like to include a search box (e.g. using the InputBox extension) and show the results in the same page (i.e. reload the page and replace part of the page with the search results)

Searching the File Namespace
I noticed that files with numbers in there names can not be searched. Example: When you search in "everything" with A1 there is only one hit on the page with that name, there is no hit on the file.
 * Page name : A1
 * File name : A1.xls

When there is no number in the file name like: Now when searching for A in "everything" produces hits for both.
 * Page name : A
 * File name : A.xls

When you generate a page and file name with a space in between both like: When searching in "everything" with A produces hits in both but when searched with 1, only the page gets a hit.
 * Page name : A 1
 * File name : A 1.xls

This means that the File: namespace can't be searched with numbers. Is this correct? Maybe there is a very plausible explanation for this but I am not able to find it until now. Is there a solution for this? Tested on a clean (default) MW 1.20.2, PHP 5.3.8 & MySQL 5.5.19 install on Apache. Any comments are welcome. Regards --Jongfeli (talk) 10:30, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Sources of info
Is anyone aware of any 'technical' documentation about the search functionality? This would enable us to enhance the 'non-technical' article we are currently talking about (Help:Searching). I have submitted an edit to the article, but I have to admit it is just based on trial & error with one particular wiki. I had a look myself for 'technical' documentation, but didn't find any. What I did find was this page at Meta Wiki which might be useful for some people - although remember please don't just copy the text from there to here, because it is not public domain (see Project:PD help) - and also it assumes "lucene search".

I suppose there may be just too much variety 'out in the wild' of how administrators have configured their MediaWiki wikis for us ever to make this Help:Searching article really useful for a decent proportion of users. But a lot of wiki users are quite technically-minded (or at least have a friend/colleague who is), so I wonder whether 'technical' documentation might be the best prospect when it comes to MediaWiki search functionality. Open4D (talk) 12:58, 18 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I too would like to see a detailed page on how the search functions. Limit the discussion to a standard LAMP install if necessary. I see all kind of odd results on my work wiki and I cannot explain them sometimes. Kmacdowe (talk) 19:46, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Questions not currently covered
This section can be for questions not currently covered by the article (whose answers would potentially be useful in the article).


 * What happens when the user's search term contains a hyphenated word? (In my case, searching for   returns more results than searching for  .  If that's the normal behaviour, this page should explain it.) Open4D (talk) 13:48, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Last changes
Please check last change of introduction. No objection? I want to mark this page for translation. --Kaganer (talk) 15:13, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Search in Title
Is it possible to search in Titles, without installing an extention? Is it possible to set the word i am searching for to bold in the results? Thx for your answers!


 * Titles are searched in 1.23 and later I believe. Kmacdowe (talk) 20:33, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Auto redirect to the first result?
What would be the query to show the page that would be the first in the list of search results without displaying the search page?Gleki.arxokuna (talk) 14:08, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Should the article indicate version?
Over time the search functions for Mediawiki (MW) have changed but there is no indication of what version MW is being described. If the assumption is the latest version, that should be stated, correct? Kmacdowe (talk) 20:31, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * This site needs searching, and newcomers need help searching. I agree that it's an issue. I'd rather see a different name here with a version.


 * So I'm moving the redirect Help:search to Help:CirrusSearch to reflect Special:version. Would somebody please rename this page to something, so we can also use Help:Searching as a redirect to Help:CirrusSearch? If  is not used except for supporting old versions, then the title needs moved to something descriptive I know not what. If MW has multiple options for search extensions, and if they ship a different version of a help:searching page with each one, then yes someone who knows should indicate the version in a hatnote or title or lead.  Cpiral (talk) 01:39, 12 September 2015 (UTC)


 * What do you think this page should be named if it is a "document for other wikis", and not the search engine for this wiki? There are similar examples where the help is for users of this site, not help for developers, that we might discuss here, and conclude.  Please. Cpiral (talk) 04:04, 13 September 2015 (UTC)


 * The difference is not about version, but about what search system is installed on the wiki. The help page is current for MediaWiki 1.26, but as the notice states "This page summarizes the built-in search function" (MySQL search). --Nemo 05:33, 13 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I thought MediaWiki "shipped" with a set of help pages, including help:searching. If so, can't the tarball include this page in it renamed to help:search from help:search-mw126?  Or are all help pages here also in the tarball named exactly like this site names its own help pages.   Making further appeal to reason, If their site is already up and running, they already have there own help:searching, so the only real question is the ability to rename a file in a tarball.  I know that this is routinely done.


 * Finally in an appeal to reason, even if all other help pages shipped by name only (the names had to match), are we really sacrificing our own help:namespaces and help:subpages so we had to forgo all our own help files? Or is  help:search our only sacrifice, I mean we don't use this help:search, we use help:cirrussearch.  Can't we help:search our way to it, like we would help:namespaces? Cpiral (talk) 07:20, 13 September 2015 (UTC)


 * MediaWiki does not ship with any help page. Your questions are going off topic, see Project:PD Help and its talk if interested in the topic of how the Help namespace is managed here. --Nemo 08:46, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

New help link on search pages
MediaWiki 1.27/Roadmap shows 1.27.0-wmf.5 is deployed on Wikimedia projects November 3, 4, 5. Per T115429 it adds a "Help" link in the upper right corner of search pages. By default it goes to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:Searching. See for example testwiki:Special:Search. The target can apparently be changed in the local MediaWiki:Search-helppage. Wikimedia wikis use CirrusSearch so it seems at least one of these should be done: PrimeHunter (talk) 17:00, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
 * 1) Change the default for all wikis to be https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:CirrusSearch (cannot be done from here)
 * 2) Direct Wikimedia users more prominently to Help:CirrusSearch at top of Help:Searching
 * 3) Change Help:Searching to focus on CirrusSearch.
 * (2) was already done. Nemo 20:53, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
 * It currently says:
 * NB This page summarizes the built-in search function. A wiki may have more detailed information about available options and features enabled on it, for example the Help:CirrusSearch for this wiki.
 * It only says "this wiki", and few users will know whether their wiki has CirrusSearch. The new help link will probably generate significant traffic from other wikis. The English Wikipedia plans to replace it with en:Help:Searching but many others will keep the default link. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:24, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Hello all, I think PrimeHunter's first option is what really needs to be done. I have a task with a little more info, but I'd love more feedback and thoughts. Cpiral, Nemo, and others - does this course of action sound right to you? CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 22:00, 22 July 2016 (UTC)


 * For MW and WMF simply configure MediaWiki:Search-helppage to the value "Help:CirrusSearch". Wikipedia did.  MediaWiki did not. Wikiversity did not, etc. (1) implies there is a central, WMF config file, with a "default" to change for "all (WMF) wikis".  I don't know that there is such a place or thing. (2) is ugly and confusing.  (3) is not an option because an install will usually import the Help namespace and not install CirrusSearch.
 * For software development: Default install value for the help-search link should link to this content. (Could be a URL to this page, or a wikilink to an imported copy of this page. Importing is a most likely scenario because help pages are useful.) How do most installs configure themselves?
 * Although I trust PrimeHunter in these matters, I think we also need to consider a fourth option: the possibility that most standard installs import the Help and Manual namespaces. If so, the best option is none of the above: the default in question should then be a local wikilink to Help:Searching, even if it's a red link.  According to one installer fixing red links is a normal installation-cleanup task.  But please bear with this guess, as I have yet to install, and have yet to read the install and configuration pages. -- Cpiral (talk) 03:33, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Just a head's up for those interested, there is a patch in review that should fix this. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 22:36, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * One last update (I hope!). This patch will come to Wikimedia wikis on 30 August. I will keep an eye on things and encourage feedback if you notice anything amiss. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 17:57, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Search for exact page name still brings up search result, not the page
When I search on my 1.26.2 Mediawiki, it always "searches", even if I search for a precise page name. For example, searching for "Special:Version", I get: >There were no results matching the query. >There is a page named "Special:Version" on this wiki.

It should just take me directly though. I'm not sure why that's happening 99.225.139.21 20:19, 24 February 2016 (UTC)


 * JavaScript is required for Vector skin to navigate instead of search. It's the opposite with MonoBook. Cpiral (talk) 06:11, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Titles-only search
Hello all, is it possible to search for words in Page Titles only ? Thanks for any hint ! --Mutos (talk) 16:32, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes!  where "foo" is the word(s) you're looking for. See also Help:CirrusSearch. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 02:57, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Used template does not work well
In the help text the template dubious is used in the moment, namely in a variable. There is a link to one of the sections here in talk page, but it was added in a defective way. I tried to fix this, and now it works for English, but not for translated versions. The original issue lies in the template code (and that it is not translatad, is just one): The link to the talkpage is hardcoded (actually as magic word), but for the translated versions exist (partly?) own talk pages without redirect. Perhaps the use of dubious should be avoided here. — Speravir (talk) – 17:58, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

RegEx Without Cirrus?
Can regex searches be performed without Cirrus?

I cannot Search Wildcard with my language
My MV is version 1.30. I cannot search page and text with wildcard (*). Etc, I need to search for "mycategory" that contain in Test_Page then i type *cat* in search box but my MV don't show any page. How do i search with wildcard ?

Search only returning page titles
When I search a keyword, it only returns page titles. It does NOT search the page content. I have a default setup & havent touched anything search related. Is there any troubleshooting guide someone could point me to or things I can try? Thanks!

Fix: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Ufetvt0us8kxjr46

Help i need this but mobile Noavailableusernames1832 (talk) 04:03, 29 November 2021 (UTC)