Query Syntax

Owned by Cooper Labenske
Apr 06, 2022
3 min read

By default, Voyager searches all text (including metadata) for matching items. Results that match the title or path are ranked above results matching any other text. To customize the default field weights, see Query Settings.

In addition to the default behavior, Voyager supports explicit operators and field selection.

Operators

OR

The OR operator is the default search operator. This means that if there is no operator between two terms in a search, the OR operator is used. The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching record if either of the terms exist in a record. For example, to search for records that contain either "Florida highways" or just "highways" use the query:

"Florida highways" highways

"Florida highways" OR highways

AND

The AND operator matches records where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single record.

For example, to search for records that contain "rivers" and "lakes" use the query:

rivers AND lakes

Fields

Voyager supports fielded data. When performing a search you can either specify a field name, or use the default search which uses many fields. You can search any field by typing the field name in lowercase followed by a colon ":" and then the term you are looking for. Searching by field names only produces results that match the particular field specified.

For example, to search for  any records with "Rivers" in the name field and "Florida" in the path field, use the query:

name:rivers AND path:Florida

Note: The field is only valid for the term that it directly precedes, so the query:

name:major cities

will only find "major" in the name field. It will find "cities" using the default search which uses many fields.

To search for two or more terms in a field name, quotes are required around the text. For example, to search the name field for "major cities", use the query:

name:"major cities"

Searching by Path

Paths in voyager can either be searched for using the standard field selection operator ":", or a special "=" operator that matches folders explicitly.

Using the standard "path:" syntax, the query is looking for words in the path. For example:

path:Desktop

returns items with "Desktop" in the path.

Using the "=" operator will find files explicitly in a folder. For example:

path=F:\Desktop\NJ DEP\NJ100mhillshd\nj100mhill

Wildcards

Voyager supports single and multiple character wildcard searches within single terms.

  • To perform a single character wildcard search use the "?" symbol

  • To perform a multiple character wildcard search use the "*" symbol

The single-character wildcard search looks for terms that match that with that character. For example, to search for "text" or "test" you can use the search

te?t

Multiple-character wildcard searches look for 0 or more characters. For example, to search for counties or countries, you can use the search:

count\*

Note: * or ? are not valid as the first character in a search string

Escaping Special Characters

Voyager supports escaping special characters that are part of the query syntax. The current list special characters are:

+ - && \|\| \! ( ) { } \[ \] ^ " ~ * ? :

To escape these character use the \ before the character. 

Negating Query Terms

To negate a search use “-“ … 

For example:

Finding non-empty Fields (NOT NULL)

To search for NOT NULL, use:

 

[* TO *]

 

This translates loosely to {something TO something}.  This also applies to numeric values.

 

For example:

New in Voyager version 1.9.9 - absolute_path field

Beginning with version 1.9.9, Voyager includes a new absolute_path field than you can use in search queries..

To use absolute_path in a query, you specify words that appear in the full path of records in the index.
For example, the query

absolute_path:data

will return records with the string data in the full path.

Usage Notes

Query Syntax

If a path includes more than one directory, you must:

  • Use two backslashes (\\) as a separator

  • Add quotation marks around the query term

This means that if the absolute_path includes \directory\sub-directory, the query term would be

absolute_path:"directory\\sub-directory"

 

For example, to query for records with Project\Data\Local\CA in the absolute path, use

absolute_path:"Project\\Data\\Local\\CA"

 

Searching for a Specific Directory

To query for a specific directory, use the = operator.
For example, to search for the files in the specific folder D:\Project\Data\Local\CA, use the query

absolute_path="D:\\Project\\Data\\Local\\CA"

absolute_path vs path

The existing path field stores a location relative to the indexed location.

For example,  for records in the location D:\Project\Data\Local\CA, the path field would contain Project\Data\Local\CA.

Prior Voyager Versions 

Locations that you indexed using Voyager versions prior to 1.9.9 will not contain the absolute_pathfield. To include this field, you need to re-index those locations.