Searching with multiple key words

[bees]

Hi, I'm building an app that will eventually be a searchable databse of undergraduate theses. At the moment I'm using the template provided by powerapps which is actually very similar to the style of databse I had envisaged. 

I'm having an issue with the search box. Ideally I would like to be able to enter multiple search terms seperated by a comma or even just a space which returns all cases that contain these terms. The search function I have come up with based on information in these forums is:

SortByColumns(Search(Table1_1,TextSearchBox1.Text,"Abstract","Author","Supervisor(s)","Project_x0020_Title"),
"Year", If(SortDescending1, Descending, Ascending))

When I enter a term like "biofilm" in the box it searches the columns "Abstract","Author","Supervisor(s)" and "Project Title" and returns any case containing the word biofilm in these 4 columns.

This is great but ideally I would like to be able to enter multiple search terms in the text box, for example "biofilm", "Smith", "ecotoxicology" to return any cases which contain these three words. Is this possible to do in Powerapps? At the moment if I enter multiple terms and the words aren't consecutive then the search returns a blank. So for example if I enter "john" "smith", projects by john smith are returned; however if I enter "smith" "ecotoxicology" then there is no cases returned.

Thanks!

[Eva1]

This code was exactly what I needed! Thanks so much!

[Anonymous]

@CalfordMath Hello, I'm a beginner in PowerApps, Wanted to check if you could help my interpret "If you wanted a collection of records that contain ANY of the keywords you specify, you could modify the Filter criteria from IsBlank(Find("0"...  to Find("1", ... ) > 0". Didn't understand this. Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks!

[CalfordMath]

The code searches for each keyword and builds a string of “0”s (word not found) and “1”s (word found) as it does this.  Example: If I searched for 3 keywords, and the string returned was “010” that would mean that only the 2nd keyword was found.  To have the search return only records that contain ALL three words, I would only want “111” cases, so the filter I used is to require “IsBlank” when I search for a zero.  Conversely, if ANY word found is favourable, I could simply search for a “1” in the string.  So I remove the “IsBlank” bracket, change my “Find 0” to a “Find 1” 

Here is a visual:

 Let me know if this makes sense!

[Anonymous]

@CalfordMath This is amazing. Thank you for this. It does make sense now and the code works as well. I was struggling for quite some time yesterday.

One other question I had was that when I use the code above on the items property of my gallery it works fine, however the contents of the gallery are blank by default and only show up when a keyword is typed in the Textinput box. I'd like to show the contents of the gallery even if the text input box is blank. Any idea how we do that?

[posey]

@Anonymous, 

The following is how I've implemented the code with the gallery sorted and filtered. This displays all products that match the selected Service and Machine type from the item on the form from the previous page by default, then filters the gallery based on what I type into the search box, hope this helps - 

Sort(Sort(Filter(KB_Data,ProductType = KB_ProductType_Ref.Text && ServiceType = KB_ServiceType_Ref.Text && Lower(MachineType) = Lower(KB_MachineType_Ref.Text), IsBlank(
Find(
"0",
Concat(
Filter(
Split(
KB_SearchBar.Text,
" " //or any delimiter.
),
!IsBlank(Result)
),
If(
TrimEnds(Result) in Solution || TrimEnds (Result) in ServiceNotes, // etc.
"1",
"0"
)
)
)
)
), UpVote, SortOrder.Descending), Known)

[CalfordMath]

Hi @Anonymous and @posey 
Your situations are different.  Posey is using the "IsBlank(Find("0"... )" to return results that contain "ALL keywords".  In this case, leaving the keyword list blank means the string of 0s and 1s is an empty string "", and therefore "0" is not found and the result passes the test.  The gallery will display all records from the data source. 

Bilbash is using "Find("1" ... ) > 0 to return results that contain "ANY of the keywords" or better put, "At least one".  In this case, leaving the keyword box blank means "1" is not found in any record's empty string of 0s and 1s.  The gallery will be blank.

If you want the gallery to show all records, rather than none, by default, you just need a line of code that basically says "if the keyword box is blank then return all records that aren't blank, otherwise .... filter using the keywords"

Here is some code:

Filter(
    CollectionName,
      If(SearchBox.Text = "", ColumnName1 <> "" , //else... continue with the filter
        Find(
            "1",
            Concat(
                Filter(
                    Split(
                        SearchBox.Text,
                        " " //or any delimiter.
                    ),
                    !IsBlank(Result)
                ),
                If(
                    TrimEnds(Result) in ColumnName1 || TrimEnds (Result) in ColumnName2, // etc.
                    "1",
                    "0"
                )
            ) >0
       )
    )
)

[Anonymous]

@CalfordMath That's perfect. Thank you so much for this. Works really well!

[daz0894]

@CalfordMath This does exactly what I need (searching without need for exact phrase), however, it doesn't support delegation, so results are limited to the first 500 (or whatever number of rows is specified in PowerApp settings) rows in the SQL database. Is there any change that can be made to the formula to make it support delegation? I have tried @PK_Hong's formula, however, it only searches exact phrase within each column being searched, which is pointless for me...

I'd really appreciate if you had a solution!

[CalfordMath]

Some thoughts:  You can increase the delegation limit within PowerApps, up to a hard limit of 2000 I believe. (App settings, Advanced settings, Data row limit for non-delegable queries).  This might mean slower app performance.  If you have a set larger than the maximum limit, could you grab the entire set of data as a Collection and then query the collection?  I believe there are not issues with size when working with a collection.  I haven't tested these out, but doing some Googling, they seem to be some workarounds.

[daz0894]

Thanks @CalfordMath - I'll try the Collection suggestion sometime when I get time, unless other solutions come to light, as I have 6000 SQL rows to search in one gallery (stock), and 13,000 in another gallery (customers)