Feature Proposal: Extend syntax of SEARCH variable to restrict search to specified TWikiForms field

Motivation

A commom requirement in designing TWikiApplications is searching TWikiForms fields. At present, this can only be accomplished using very un-intuitive regular expression constructs.

I've been using these quite extensively for several years and still don't understand them. I simply copy and paste regexes I find in TWiki.org without really understanding how they work. I consider this the worst usability aspect of designing TWikiApplications which, as has been mentioned repeatedly of late, is probably the most important competitive feature of TWiki.

Description

Extend the syntax of SEARCH variable to allow searching for specific text within a specificed TWikiForms field. Looking at current SEARCH syntax, it seems to me the most intuitive implementation of this would be to add a new parameter such as formfield="name". The would restrict the search for specificed "text" to incidences of that particular formfield.

-- LynnwoodBrown - 20 Apr 2005

Impact and Available Solutions

Note: Patch is attached as https://twiki.org/p/pub/Codev/SearchByFormField/twiki-foo-bar-patch.diff. The patch is against the TWikiAlphaRelease of 15 Feb 2004.

Documentation

If necessary, user documentation of new features introduced by this proposal.

Examples

Example uses of features introduced by proposal.

Implementation

Any comments on how the feature is implemented or could be improved

Discussion:

Another reason regex's are bad is because the SEARCH you write assumes a field ordering.

That said, IMO the FormQueryPlugin and esp. its underlying contrib should be just be brought into the core.

-- MartinCleaver - 20 Apr 2005

While I agree with you Martin, I think having this kind of option part of the basic SEARCH syntax is desirable as well. FormQueryPlugin does a lot more while this FeatureRequest seems like a logical, incremental extension of the basic search feature already in TWiki.

-- LynnwoodBrown - 20 Apr 2005