How to search by multiple filters

#1

Any suggestions for how to create a multi-filter search interface?

I am looking for a way to search text then click various boxes or dropdowns of tags or other data. This would be similar to Google Drive’s new search chips.

Ex. Search: Farm Tags: [ ] Books [ ] Books Read Publish Date: before 2018

I roughly understand how I could return a result for a specific search with a filter, but I’m wanting it to be more user-friendly and clickable for others who use the site.

Thanks for your time!

Em

PS - I regularly use this forum and just wanted to say thanks to everyone who is so open and collaborative with their various solutions.

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#2

I built something along those lines a couple of years ago when I was new to TiddlyWiki 5. It involved a lot of conditionally concatenating a filter string to filter the list:

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Each search “chip” saves the value to an underlying state tiddler which is used in the search if not blank.

Since then we have had a lot of improvements with filter prefixes and it probably could be done a lot more elegantly now. The :filter and :map filter run prefixes and the filter[] operator would probably be very useful.

The basic logic is: if state tiddler is not blank, then filter by the value of the state tiddler in the appropriate field.

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#3

You might find my TiddlyTools FilterGenerators “PowerSearch” useful.

https://tiddlytools.com/filtergenerators.html

#4

As other have pointed out we can now construct what we may call "compound filters"

In my view the “Conceptually easy to understand idea” is that of the subfilter operator.

Eg; filter +[subfilter<farmtags-filter>] +[subfilter<books-filter>]

Coincidently from a technical perspective, this is related to Is there a way to display a tab, in sidebar tabs, only if a condition if met? - #4 by TW_Tones basicaly which is to allow “inclulsions or exclusions” to the result of a filter.

#5

I’m reminded of the ol’ tagsplorer macro by the mysterious FND.

Edit: I note that thread is from 2010… when I had only been around TW for some 3-4 years… does this mean I’m not a newbie to TW anymore now?

#6

You can’t be a newbie and a key player @twMat

You are no longer a newbie!

but you are still entitled to claim ignorance, as we all have to sometimes.

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#7

Hah, that’s a nice blast from the past. I’ll be sure to tell FND that he is a mysterious figure of legend in TW circles these days.

#8

Thank you! There is a lot here to play with and looks like exactly what I was hoping for.