Searching the Documentation

Search results are listed according to their relevance, with the most relevant result showed on top of the list. For each result the Documentation Section (e.g. 'System Docs'), the title of the documentation page as well as some textual context is displayed.

If consecutive search results belong to the same Documentation Section, they are grouped under the same entry for the Documentation Section. Non-consecutive search results belonging to the same Documentation Section are displayed separately, according to their relevance, each displaying the Documentation Section which they belong. So the results list may show the same Documentation Section several times.

By default, the search mechanism combines multiple items together in a search with a logical OR. That is, a search for “foo bar” will match documents that contain “foo” or contain “bar” or contain both. This behavior is controllable at the item level, i.e. the presence of each item in matching documents can be specified. By default each item is optional in a matching document, though a document must have at least one matching item. It is possible to specify that an item must be present in matching documents, or that it must be absent in matching documents.

To indicate that an item must be present in matching documents the item should be prefixed with a plus (+) and to indicate that an item must be absent the item should be prefixed with a minus (-). Without either prefix the item’s presence in matching documents is optional. Searching for '+foo bar -baz' will find all documents that contain “foo”, might contain “bar” but do not contain “baz”.

To simulate a logical AND search of “foo AND bar” mark both items as required, e.g. '+foo +bar'.

The search mechanism supports wildcards when performing searches. A wildcard is represented as an asterisk (*) and can appear anywhere in a search item. For example, foo\* will match all documents with words beginning with “foo” while \*oo will match all documents that end with "oo". Finally, a wildcard can be in the middle of an item. f\*o will match any documents that contain an item that begins with “f” and ends in “o”.

Searches can be focussed due to structural aspects of the documentation. The following focus criteria are supported:

These focus elements can be combined to control the search results. For example: to find the documents of the Administration section which have 'secur*' either in the document title or in a headline in the document, enter '+component:admin* +title:secur*'.

In multi-item searches, a single item may be more important than others. For these cases the search mechanism supports item level boosts. Any document that matches a boosted item will get a higher relevance score, and appear higher up in the results. A boost is applied by appending a caret (^) and then a positive integer to an item. So 'foo^10 bar' weights the item “foo” 10 times higher than the item “bar”. The boost value can be any positive integer, and different items can have different boosts: 'foo^10 bar^5 baz'

The search mechanism supports fuzzy matching search items in documents, which can be helpful if the spelling of an item is unclear, or to increase the number of search results that are returned. The amount of fuzziness to allow when searching can also be controlled. Fuzziness is applied by appending a tilde (~) and then a positive integer to an item. So searching for 'foo~1' will find all documents that have a word within 1 edit distance of “foo”.

An edit distance of 1 allows words to match if either adding, removing, changing or transposing a character in the word would lead to a match. For example 'boo' requires a single edit (replacing “f” with “b”) and would match, but 'boot' would not as it also requires an additional “t” at the end.