Re: REST API: Sorting, wish-list

Hi Ralf:

In message <[email protected]>,
Ralf Schlatterbeck writes:
>On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 04:58:32PM +0200, Ralf Schlatterbeck wrote:
[...]
>> Substring search
>> ----------------
>> 
>> Currently strings do a substring-search. For an exact match we would
>> have to extend the 'filter' method of the database. This is (at least
>> for me) probably quite easy to do.
>> 
>> How would we change the syntax of the REST queries?
>> I'd suggest we change the semantics to do an exact match for
>> property=string searches, that leave us with the question how substring
>> search should be expressed.
>
>I've now implemented exact string search.
>For the filter method in Class, this just takes an additional dictionary
>named 'exact_match_spec' similar to the existing filterspec.
>
>In the REST-API I've adopted the following syntax:
>
>propname:=exact
>for the exact string search
>propname~=nonexact
>for the case-insensitive substring search
>
>The syntax with a single '=' still does the substring search as before.
>The same syntax can also be used for properties other than String, but
>makes no difference.
>
>The ':' *before* the '=' (and likewise the ~) was adopted because the
>form parse will put the ':' or '~' at the end of the property name. In
>this way we do not exclude certain strings from being searched. A
>special character *after* the '=' would have the drawback that this
>character could not start a string to be searched.
>
>Let me know what you think about the new syntax.

:= looks like assignment to me, but I don't have a better alternative,
so it works for me. I suspect I would not use ~= and just go with the
= format.

Given the discussion about %SYS searching on the user's list, would
extending it to a third form like *= to indicate search everything
including non-word character strings be a reasonable idea?

I think I remeber mentioning in an email that full text search over
rest would be useful. I may have suggested @search=word as the
mechanism.

Then to search for %SYS, something like @search*=%SYS could be used.
Maybe it couldbe implemented with a full text search for SYS then
taking all the resulting messages and looking for %SYS. As any message
that doesn't include SYS isn't going to include %SYS.

Thoughts? Have a great day.

--
				-- rouilj
John Rouillard
===========================================================================
My employers don't acknowledge my existence much less my opinions.