794083 - add query_string support to advanced search

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1100394

(support.mozilla.org :: Search, defect, P2)

Description

[Will Kahn-Greene [:willkg] ET needinfo? me]

This bug covers adding query_string support to Advanced Search.

query_string is the ElasticSearch feature name for using the query parser syntax that Lucene has. Documentation for both of those here:

* http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/reference/query-dsl/query-string-query.html
* http://lucene.apache.org/core/3_6_1/queryparsersyntax.html

There are a couple of ways we can do this:

Option 1: Change the Advanced Search search box to _always_ do query_string searches.

Option 2: Add a checkbox to the Advanced Search search box that enables/disables query_string searches.


The option we pick depends on how Advanced Search typically gets used by everyone who uses it. I'd probably suggest option 2.


Complications:

1. query parser syntax is non-trivial and similar to but not exactly like the search syntax you use on other sites like Google. We'd probably need to document it somewhere. I think that should go in a kb page, get localized, and get a link next to the Advanced Search search box.

2. To use some of the advanced features of query parser syntax, you need to know how the index is structured and the names of fields and such. We don't have that documented anywhere. We could add that to the Kitsune docs, but it adds more maintenance burden.

3. When you're doing a search and using the query parser syntax and the search text is invalid (i.e. raises a parse error), we probably want to capture that error text and tell the user. However it won't be localized (it comes from ElasticSearch) and probably isn't normal-human-readable (it'll be technical). We would need to figure out what to do here. Since the syntax is non-trivial, it's very likely people will hit parse errors.

4. If people don't like the query parser syntax, there's nothing we can do about it.