107860 - QuickSearch: Display information about "field: value" syntax

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 518293

(Bugzilla :: User Interface, enhancement, P4)

Description

[Mrten]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:0.9.5+) Gecko/20011023
BuildID:    2001102309 / 2001103003

entering "about:config" in the 'enter a bug# or give some search terms' field
gives an error message 'xxx is not a valid fieldname'

does so in every other input field i've seen.



Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. go to URL
2. enter 'a:b' or something like that
3. press enter, voila!

Actual Results:  error message

Expected Results:  well, enter "about:config" as a value of course! :)

Comment 1

[Vladimir Ermakov]

This alert probably should say "invalid keyword"... if its a bug at all its bug
with bugzilla.

Go to yahoo or something and put the same thing in there, it submits just like
it should.

Comment 2

[Vladimir Ermakov]

reassigning

Comment 3

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

The quicksearch box on the Bugzilla page uses the colon as a separator to name a
specific field to be searched.  This is a feature, not a bug.  For example, you
can enter "owner:[e-mail]" and get a list of bugs with Joe as an owner. 
If you don't specify a field to search, it defaults to searching summary and
description.

HOWEVER...  the docs for this (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/quicksearch.html)
don't appear to indicate this feature is available, so I'm morphing this bug to
get the quicksearch docs fixed.

Comment 4

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

We are currently trying to wrap up Bugzilla 2.16.  We are now close enough to
release time that anything that wasn't already ranked at P1 isn't going to make
the cut.  Thus this is being retargetted at 2.18.  If you strongly disagree with
this retargetting, please comment, however, be aware that we only have about 2
weeks left to review and test anything at this point, and we intend to devote
this time to the remaining bugs that were designated as release blockers.

Comment 5

[Andreas Franke (gone)]

QuickSearch field:value syntax is described here:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/quicksearchhack.html

This page is linked from quicksearch.html, but you're right that the
documentation can be improved a lot. Adding this one to the quicksearch
documentation tracker.

BTW if you want the literal value, you can enclose it in quotes like this:
"about:config", and you'll get bugs with `about:config' in the summary.

Google uses prefixes, too, e.g. "site:". In fact, most of the QuickSearch logic
follows Google's example.

Comment 6

[Andreas Franke (gone)]

Attachment: possible fix/improvement: better error message

Comment 7

[Bradley Baetz (:bbaetz)]

Comment on attachment 60157 [details] [diff] [review]
possible fix/improvement: better error message

>                                 alert("`"+fields[k]+"'"+
>-                                      " is not a valid field name.");
>+                                      " is not a valid field name."+
>+                                      ' Use quotes "..." for values that'+
					' Use quotes ("...") for values that' +
>+                                      " contain special characters.");
				  maybe ' contain colon, comma or spaces'?

Are there other 'special' chars?

Comment 8

[Andreas Franke (gone)]

Yes, there are other 'special' chars, e.g. the pipe character "|" as a shorthand
for " OR ", plus "+", minus "-" and hash "#" as described on the
quicksearch.html page. Future introduction of other special chars is possible,
even very likely.
One example would be the equal sign "=" for exact matches as opposed to
substring (see bug 76498), or possibly the slash "/" as a regexp delimiter. 

Do you really want me to upload a new patch with ("...") instead of "..." ?

Comment 9

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

The User Interface component now belongs to Gerv.  Reassigning all UNCONFIRMED
and NEW (but not ASSIGNED) bugs currently owned by Myk (the previous component
owner) to Gerv.

Comment 10

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Reassigning back to Myk.  That stuff about Gerv taking over the User Interface
component turned out to be short-lived.  Please pardon our confusion, and I'm
very sorry about the spam.

Comment 11

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Pushing out bugs that aren't blockers.  If someone's working on one of these, we
can move it back.

Comment 12

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

This bug has not been touched by its owner in over six months, even though it is
targeted to 2.20, for which the freeze is 10 days away. Unsetting the target
milestone, on the assumption that nobody is actually working on it or has any
plans to soon.

If you are the owner, and you plan to work on the bug, please give it a real
target milestone. If you are the owner, and you do *not* plan to work on it,
please reassign it to [e-mail] or a .bugs component owner. If you are
*anybody*, and you get this comment, and *you* plan to work on the bug, please
reassign it to yourself if you have the ability.

Comment 13

[Teemu Mannermaa (:wicked)]

A much better QuickSearch documentation was added in bug 518293 and also contains field help. Also, the error message about using unknown field has a link to the documentation listing all the supported fields. These changes should make this syntax clearer.