Curious - What exactly does the search bar search?

Hi @Mark @david, I’m working on an app template and @Deena gave great feedback about the limitation of the search bar.

Apparently, when users type to search products, only the product title, product description and price is searchable from the list.

I would like for users to search the product based on other fields (like category, brand, etc.) I tried to create additional text field and populate them to test of the search bar would pick up on the terms but it didn’t work.

I assumed that the search bar only works on searching text fields from a record but in practice it doesn’t seem to be the case.

Can you shed any light on how the search bar function works?

I’m hoping some insight will allow me to create a workaround so that users can search by other terms than just the price, product and description.

A link to the app is below if you’d like to test for yourself.

https://hollow-jump-2892.glideapp.io/

Thanks!

1 Like

You should be able to search any values that are visible in the list or the details of the list items.

4 Likes

I gave that feedback based on my experience that search of an inline list will return results from any words on the details pages which is amazing and exactly how it should be…so I’m surprised! Great to ask for the official answer!

1 Like

That’s what I thought, but when I added the components to the detail screen, the search bar didn’t pick it up.

It might be because the component was a text column pulled from a template and not a text field?

I’ll play around with it and see.

Thanks for the response Jeff!

1 Like

The search bar just needed a little “reboot”. Removing and then adding it back did the trick!

2 Likes

I need the search bar to search on a column (no accent) in the table


but I don’t want the data from that column to appear in the app
Is there any CSS code that will hide say “caption” or does anyone have another solution?

I’d have your sit down and work out the exact code, but I think you can use a template column to wrap your no accent text is in div tags with a css style of no display. Put that in a rich text component in the details screen for the list items instead of the list itself.

Basically something like this, but without the checkbox part in the examples. Looks like there are a few ways to try it.

Basically we are trying to get the value of the details screen, but not visible. This should allow glide to search that column value without it being visible.

You could try the built in visibility settings on a rich text component, but I’ve always been under the impression that it had to be a visible component for search to look at that column value. The div trick would work around that.

I found this thread after noticing that my search wasn’t working as expected.

I expected to type “golf” into the search bar and get the first inline list item. I don’t. Should I?

Yes, it should return that item since it has “golf” in the header… Try unchecking the search bar and then re-checking it then typing “golf” to see if it resets it.

If not then maybe something to do with your filters, but I can’t see why that would affect it if it it’s displaying correctly

3 Likes

Weird. It’s working now. I did try your uncheck/recheck trick when I first posted to this thread. Perhaps it took a few mins to regenerate the search index hence working now? I’m guessing so. Anyway, all good now!

3 Likes

How do you do that when it’s grayed-out?
image

It’s not picking up on values that are inside the details pages. It picks up only the “front” page in which the search bar is located. Any other way to “rest” it?
Also, our of curiosity, how unstable is this search bar? i.e. how frequent does it need resetting?

The search bar is stable. I’m guessing Lisa was just suggesting something to try.

Do you have an inline list on the screen, or more than one list? You can enable or disable search on the inline list component itself. What are you trying to search? Is the value you are trying to search actually visible on the detail screen of the list item?

Perfect!
Tried the off-on toggle, but it didn’t work :frowning:

Yes.

For example, find a client by phone number. The inline list of the “clients” screen is showing the client name and similar high level values, but not the phone number.

Of course :slight_smile:
But it’s not working

Unless it’s having trouble searching numbers. What type of column is the phone number stored in? Does the search work for other values on the screen?

Not really, also tried searching by email

Text. I actually don’t remember why but I’m pretty sure there was a reason to not use number or phone number types.

I would be surprised if there was actually a bug, but I won’t rule it out. As far as I know, there has never been any sort of issues with the search. I’d be more inclined to think that something isn’t configured correctly, but it’s hard to say without see how everything is set up in your app. If you truly feel that there is a bug, then you can submit a ticket to Glide support.

https://glide-help.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Do you actually display the phone number in the details screen? If yes, what component do you use?

Yes

Basic table

Please try this to see if it works:

  • Display the phone number in a text component.
  • Hide that component using a condition that will never be true.
  • Go back to the main screen, disable the search and re-enable it.
  • Try if the search takes the phone into account now.

Indeed, working.
So Basic Table isn’t searchable? Any other components that aren’t searhable?