Improvement Diaspora* search engine

juansantiago · October 30, 2014, 12:00am

Improve the Diaspora* search engine

Allow the ability to search a combination of tags, eg. #nature + #photo
Allow the ability for users to search for posts by user and by subject, eg: to search for posts by Juan Santiago, search "juansantiago@joindiaspora.com + #palestine"

(Please, English is not my language, can anyone correctly write my proposal?)

(Edit by @Chris26)

Note: This discussion was imported from Loomio. Click here to view the original discussion.

juansantiago · October 30, 2014, 12:00am

Proposal: Combinated search

can search a combination of tags, eg #nature + #photo
can search users combining by tags, eg: juansantiago@joindiaspora.com + #palestine

Outcome: N/A

Votes:

Yes: 21
Abstain: 1
No: 0
Block: 0

Note: This proposal was imported from Loomio. Vote details, some comments and metadata were not imported. Click here to view the proposal with all details on Loomio.

jhass · October 30, 2014, 12:00am

Great, yet another “I can haz please” proposal. Please show me a single comment objecting an improved tag search.

juansantiago · October 30, 2014, 12:00am

@chris26
Yes please, the proposal should be better written

juansantiago · October 30, 2014, 12:00am

@jonnehass

It does not seem contradictory, the label improved with the combined search.

The proposed improved labels is useful to use phrases like labels (not just words).

The proposal to enhance the search is wider, also includes search: label + author.

Have you thought about backwards compatibility?

PS: I am not opposed to improving labels, I abstain, because are technical issues that i,m do not understand

jhass · October 30, 2014, 12:00am

@juansantiago please rephrase, I can’t follow what you’re trying to say me or what your answer has to do with my statement.

juansantiago · October 30, 2014, 12:00am

Jonne Haß, ok, sorry about my English,
I’ll have someone translate this to proper English.

yes is about your statement.

chendy · October 30, 2014, 12:00am

What about negative tags? #cats -#dogs (posts with #cats but without #dogs). What about OR operator… why not all the operators?

faldrian · October 31, 2014, 12:00am

(You know… just because you wish for the feature here, it is not just going to happen. Do you already have plans how to implement it and are ready to code it yourself?)

michaeldagn · October 31, 2014, 12:00am

here’s a possible way to do a federated search

Seeks,

Replace the Google, etc plugins it comes with with something to fetch feeds of tagged public content from your Diaspora instance

At the Seeks end the connector needs to be done in c but it doesn’t look difficult.

I already tried it by modifying one of its plugins to fetch some event-related feeds here.
Apart from minor (fixable) formatting issues my little hack works and the seeks instance finds the content.

Seeks itself does a kind of federation of search results using some kind of DHT which would reduce the need for every site doing search to mass-poll or mass-crawl every other.

goob · October 31, 2014, 12:00am

Um, haven’t we already had loads of discussions about this very issue? I’m sure there are several existing Loomio threads, although I can’t be bothered to go looking for them at the moment.

jasonrobinson · November 1, 2014, 12:00am

I don’t think anyone objects to this - but we need code, not a vote

Please code!

asher3 · November 6, 2014, 12:00am

Does anyone know where this is in the code? I found:

github.com

diaspora/diaspora/blob/develop/app/controllers/search_controller.rb

# frozen_string_literal: true

class SearchController < ApplicationController
  before_action :authenticate_user!

  def search
    if search_query.starts_with?('#')
      if search_query.length > 1
        respond_to do |format|
          format.json {redirect_to tags_path(:q => search_query.delete("#."))}
          format.any {redirect_to tag_path(:name => search_query.delete("#."))}
        end
      else
        flash[:error] = I18n.t('tags.show.none', :name => search_query)
        redirect_back fallback_location: stream_path
      end
    else
      redirect_to people_path(:q => search_query)
    end
  end

This file has been truncated. show original

Looks like the code right now is just
if search_query.starts_with?(’#’)

balasankarchelamat · November 6, 2014, 12:00am

Why is this a vote? Isn’t this a feature request to be filed at GitHub?

faldrian · November 6, 2014, 12:00am

It at least won’t be done unless it’s filed at github.

goob · November 6, 2014, 12:00am

Why is this a vote? Isn’t this a feature request to be filed at GitHub?

It already has been filed at Github, long ago… see #2019 and #4287.

There’s also an existing Loomio thread about it. So this is a duplicate in every sense.

asher3 · November 6, 2014, 12:00am

Thanks for keeping us in line @goob!

michielzandbelt · December 30, 2014, 12:00am

(New here, and not really understanding the somtimes quite technical dialogs and various threads on similar subjects, apologising therefore, BUT as a new Diaspora user that likes to see the use of Diaspora increasing)
I can’t find the answer on my question why searching is person ID and hashtag limited and why one cannot search fo any word (so search for words not hastagged).
I guess I am defintely not the first one to note this, and most probably (I assume) it may result from a deliberate policy / community choice to provide the search option for now as it is, but in the wiki or on the future development pages provided by Diaspora https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Current_and_future_development this issue IMO isn’t clearly adressed.

Is there a specific URL where I can read the current vision on (limited) search options in Diaspora* and why one cannot search for single words without a #?

Again I apologise because the question may be very annoying for those who know, but that’s exacty the point: how do you know why this is the case?

juansantiago · December 30, 2014, 12:00am

@michielzandbelt

The absolute search consume many more recuros for a system like Diaspora is vital conserve resources, search taxonomies save memory and processes.

A absolute search engine for diaspora (only content and public users) is a very good idea (not consume resources pods), but it seems preferable to be done externally, an API would facilitate this.

michielzandbelt · December 30, 2014, 12:00am

ah, ok thanks for explaining Juan. I get the point now, hopefully a future feature then