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Purpose of this document

This page is intended for developers and advanced users of Confluence. It gives an overview of the Apache Lucene search fields used in Confluence.

On this page:

Searching for Content in Specific Fields

Confluence data is stored in fields which can be specified in the search. To search a specific field, type the name of the field followed by a colon ':' and then the term you are looking for.

Examples:

The field specification applies only to the term directly preceding the colon. For example, the query below will look for "Some" in the title field and will search for "Heading" in the default fields.

Confluence Search Fields

Below are the fields which can be searched, listed by content type.

Personal Information

Name

Indexed

Stored

Tokenised

Notes

handle

true

true

false

 

type

true

true

false

 

urlPath

true

true

false

 

fullName

true

true

true

 

username

true

true

true

 

title

true

true

false

 

labelText

true

true

true

 

modified

true

true

false

 

created

true

true

false

 

userpermission

true

true

false

 

contentBody

true

true

true

 

Pages

Name

Indexed

Stored

Tokenised

Notes

handle

true

true

false

 

type

true

true

false

 

urlPath

true

true

false

 

title

true

true

true

 

spacekey

true

true

false

 

labelText

true

true

true

 

modified

true

true

false

 

created

true

true

false

 

userpermission

true

true

false

 

contentBody

true

true

true

 

lastModifiers

true

true

false

Username of the user who last updated the page.

creatorName

true

true

false

Username of the user who added the page.

macroName

true

true

false

The name of a macro used on the page

Blog

Name

Indexed

Stored

Tokenised

Notes

handle

true

true

false

 

type

true

true

false

 

urlPath

true

true

false

 

title

true

true

true

 

spacekey

true

true

false

 

labelText

true

true

true

 

modified

true

true

false

 

created

true

true

false

 

userpermission

true

true

false

 

contentBody

true

true

true

 

lastModifiers

true

true

false

Username of the user who last updated the blog post.

creatorName

true

true

false

Username of the user who created the blog post.

macroName

true

true

false

The name of a macro used in the blog

Attachments

Name

Indexed

Stored

Tokenised

Notes

handle

true

true

false

 

type

true

true

false

 

urlPath

true

true

false

 

filename

true

true

true

 

title

true

true

false

 

comment

true

true

true

 

spacekey

true

true

false

 

modified

true

true

false

 

created

true

true

false

 

userpermission

true

true

false

 

contentBody

true

true

true

 

Mail Items

Name

Indexed

Stored

Tokenised

Notes

handle

true

true

false

 

type

true

true

false

 

urlPath

true

true

false

 

title

true

true

true

 

spacekey

true

true

false

 

messageid

true

true

false

 

inreplyto

true

true

false

 

recipients

true

true

true

 

labelText

true

true

true

 

modified

true

true

false

 

created

true

true

false

userpermission

true

true

false

 

contentBody

true

true

true

 

lastModifiers

true

true

false

The username of the user who did the mail import, not the person who sent the email message.

creatorName

true

true

false

The username of the user who did the mail import, not the person who sent the email message.

Related Topics

27 Comments

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  1. Mar 29, 2009

    Bruno Rotondi

    It seems, that Confluece provides a very powerfull search, but it would help, if you give more complicated examples, expecially with above terms: How to search for

    • the last 10 actions of UserName
    • the words "never reach", inside a comment of UserName, which he wrote in the last 30 days
    • ...

    "Confluence Search Syntax" has a long list of Comments. Hint: Create a new page "Search Exemples" with more complicated searches, including fields, ranking, filters, ...
    Best regards, Bruno

    1. Apr 01, 2009

      Arie Murdianto

      Hi Bruno,

      The advance search that are being your example, is more like user statistic instead of search engine capability. Confluence provides search field to limit the search scope. For example only for title or label only. There is a similar feature request that you may be interested:

      You can cast a vote to increase its popularity and add yourself as a watcher to receive notification for the updates.

      If the feature request does not meet your need, you can raise it in our JIRA:

      1. Apr 01, 2009

        Bruno Rotondi

        Thanks for your Infos!

        I'm not interested in statistics. If a user has interesting comments, I may browse, what he wrote else. Or I remember XY wrote soemthing about AB and am searching this comment... (But since I do not use Confluence at the moment, I won't start a feature request. BTW another feature request would be no to mail me every comment-editing, but only the summary (wink) ).

        Best regards, Bruno

  2. Jun 03, 2009

    Anonymous

    I want to search the body of news for a specific string.

    The string sounds like: ABCDEF.F0815.FIRST.STEP.C090603. But when I type this into the search field, then there are no matches?!

    What can be the problem?

    Best regards

    Elif

    1. Aug 11, 2009

      Azwandi Mohd Aris [Atlassian]

      Hi Elif,

      If you type in "ABCDEF.F0815.FIRST.STEP.C090603" in the search field, Confluence should return the page in the search results. On the other hand, if you search for "F0815", "ABCDEF" or etc., the page will not be returned due to the Text Tokenisation and Filtering.

      Cheers,
      Azwandi

  3. Aug 02, 2009

    Anonymous

    Are there any examples of how to use the created and modified fields? In particular the format of the dates could be useful if a user wants a list of items created on a specific date, etc.

    1. Aug 04, 2009

      Sashidaran Jayaraman [Atlassian]

      Hi,

      I have tried to search for the documentation regarding this myself and I have found two good documentations. Here are the documentations:

      1. Searching Confluence
      2. Lucene Range Searches

      Unfortunately, both the references did not work out for me in Confluence. I will contact the developer and technical writer and will get back to you regarding this matter.

      Cheers
      JSashi

      1. Aug 05, 2009

        Sashidaran Jayaraman [Atlassian]

        Hi,

        Apologies for my mistake in my previous comment. The search field actually works.
        Basically, you need a date range in order to use the created and modified fields. The date format is MM/dd/yy.

        For example, if you are looking for contents created from 1st August 2009 till 3rd August 2009, you would be using the following syntax in the search field:

        The mistake I made was my assumption that the date shown in the search result is actually the content creation date. However, this is not true. If you check the page info for one of the contents, you will realise that the created date reflects your search query.

        In order to search for only one particular date, ensure that the start date and end date is the same. For instance, here is what you need to type in order to search for contents that were created for example on 5th August 2009:

        As for the modified field, it is basically the same as the created field. For example, if you are searching for contents modified on 30th August 2008, here is what you need to type:

        Hope this helps. I have also contacted our technical writer to update this page soon for the benefit of other readers.

        Cheers
        JSashi

        1. Jul 08, 2010

          Anonymous

          Hi JSashi,

          I have input this information in the search field: 

          created: \[08/01/10 TO 08/03/10\]

          it returns 0 hits.

          what am I doing wrong?

          Thanks

          Michael

          1. Nov 24, 2010

            Daniel Kjellin [Atlassian]

            I just found this question, and thought I'd reply for future reference.

            The problem is that you are escaping the square brackets, so instead search for 

            created: [08/01/10 TO 08/03/10]

            (note the absence of \ in front of the opening and closing brackets)

        2. Jan 28, 2011

          lukas trojcak

          i must add more info to your statement:

          the date format depends on your general confluence configuration, on one of my instances it works like this:

          dd.mm.yyyy

          which in reality is instead of the above described code:

          created:[01.01.2011 TO 09.09.2011]

    2. Nov 24, 2011

      Husein Alatas [Atlassian]

      A user reported that all the above tips doesn't work in Confluence 4.0.x anymore. I've quick-looked at the index using Luke. Seems that the created and modified date format is stored as Unix Timestamp format- e.g. 20111122144320000. Seems it includes the time as well besides the date. So to use the date only, you can use range, for example:

      created:[20111122 TO 20111123]

  4. Aug 28, 2009

    Adam Radcliffe

    This would seem to be a basic search function, but I can't seem to find the syntax - I want to search within ONLY two (or more) spaces.

    So rather than generating this search string:

    • dosearchsite.action?queryString=searchterm&where=ABC&type=...

    I want to generate something equivalent to:

    • dosearchsite.action?queryString=searchterm&where=(ABC or DEF or XYZ)&type=....

    What we'll build in the end is a page where people can tick which spaces they want to include in the search. But can't see how to syntax the search string?

    Thanks in advance...

    Adam

    1. Jan 06, 2010

      Steve Davison

      Could someone an Atlassian address this?  The ability to specify multiple, but not all, spaces is important to how we use the wiki.

      [ This would be less of an issue if confluence allowed us to control permissions for individual subtrees (a page and all its descendents), but it doesn't.  So instead of having one space for almost everything, we will have to place every protected area into its own Space.  Because of that, we need to search multiple spaces at once in order to get any search synergy. ]

      The next logical question might be... "why not just search all spaces".  Often it's very useful to exclude certain content areas because for a particular type of search it just generates too much noise.

      Thanks,
      // Steve

      1. Feb 03, 2010

        Anonymous

        This is exactly our problem as well, if possible this could also be linked to certain users.

        As we operate in different countries its only relevant to search in the wikispaces of the user's country

        1. Feb 22, 2010

          Jack Low [Atlassian]

          Hi guys,
          Unfortunately, the "Search only certain spaces" feature is not available yet. There is an open improvement request being tracked here:

          Please feel free to share your comment, vote on it, and add yourself as a watcher for future update. Please also be informed on how we implement new feature.

          Thanks & regards,
          Jack

      2. Nov 24, 2010

        Daniel Kjellin [Atlassian]

        It is possible to search only a subset of all spaces. Granted there are a few hoops to jump through to make it happen. I just searched confluence.atlassian.com in spaces 'CaseStudies' and 'BambooExtensions' for the word 'content' by using the following string:

        content AND spacekey:(CS OR BAMEXT)

  5. Jan 06, 2010

    Steve Davison

    About these search fields...

    Where are the descriptions for all of these field names listed here.  Almost all of the fields are lacking any description whatsoever.  Wouldn't that be the primary purpose of this help page?

    Also, there should be more explanation of the various "content types".  I've deduced that comments probably appear as attachments, but there is much else missing about how all of this works.

    Can search fields from different content be combined?  (Since many of the field names are duplicated, the answer appears to be No.)  What I mean here is the ability to search items of a certain content type (or types), based on fields of that content type in combination with fields of another content type that is bound with it.  Examples below...

    And what about rules for combining multiple field criteria using OR keyword?

    Here are some examples of things I would like to do, but don't have enough information to make it work:

    • Find an attachment named "setup.*" on a page that has the words "upgrade" and "beta"
    • Find page comments containing the word "disagree", on a page with "help" in the title and the phrase "best known" in the content
    • Search for pages with "follow up" in either of the spaces "InternalQA" and "PublicQA"
    • Find attachment with "whitepaper" in the filename, on a page with a comment containing the word "obsolete"

    I guess I'm hitting on much the same issue that Bruno raised above.  Is there some other feature or plugin that will allow these sorts of of searches?  Without suchIt can become difficult to find things in a wiki that has collected a large amount of technical content.

    Thank you,
    // Steve

    1. Oct 11, 2010

      Anonymous

      Hi Steve, try this: http://www.customware.net/repository/display/ATLASSIAN/Searching+Confluence+Advanced+Metadata+With+Lucene#SearchingConfluence-Advanced-MetadataWithLucene-RangeSearching

  6. Jul 29, 2010

    GuL

    Maybe my questions does not perfectly fit in here but please let me know if there's a solution to my problem.

    I'd like to know what users are searching for. What I need is a report on either most searched keywords or just a list of the last x keywords users have searched.

    thx

    GuL

    1. Aug 04, 2010

      Zed Yap [Atlassian]

      Hi GuL,

      I have a mere suggestion, you might want to use the User access logging to achive this feature. The user access logging will show the search keyword. To learn more, please refer to the following documentation:

      Hope that helps.
      Cheers,
      Zed

  7. Sep 05, 2010

    Anonymous

    If you include the spacekey: field in your search then you can restrict the search to that space.  If your spacekeys are organised in a particular pattern then you may be able to set multiple spacekeys.

    Alternatively, &where is the parameter to indicate the space to search.

  8. Dec 29, 2011

    Jonas Lindström

    A wish: Please add a search field for space category. It would be helpful to limit a query to a certain group of spaces.

    Cheers.

    1. Jan 02, 2012

      Daniel Kjellin [Atlassian]

      Hello Jonas,

      This is actually already possible, albeit a bit clumsy. if you do a search like this

      You should only find pages with the Confluence category.

      1. Jan 03, 2012

        Jonas Lindström

        Thanks for the tip Daniel, but that query only returns spaces that have that label and match the terms specified.

        Searching for:

        label:team\:cgc*

        returns a list of spaces that have the space category "cgc". No pages though... Adding type:page returns nothing at all.

        Any other suggestions? (smile)

        1. Jan 03, 2012

          Daniel Kjellin [Atlassian]

          Yes you are right, the problem is of course that the space category sit on the space, and thus the page has no knowledge of this, my bad, sorry. However you raise a very valid request and one that should be reasonably easy to do. Could you raise a feature request on jira.atlassian.com and assign it to me? I hope to be able to do this soon, but I can not give any definite promises.

        2. Jan 09, 2012

          Jonas Lindström

          An issue already has been created for this, but I can't assign it to you. You can probably do that yourself. (smile) I voted for, watched the issue and commented on it.

          CONF-22474