searching-proposal.org

Orgzly Search (PROPOSAL)

Orgzly Search

This is a proposal for extending the current search support in Orgzly.

Search results, agenda or a specific note must all be accessible using a query. That way everything can be swipe&click away (drawer) or be linked to from outside the app (widget).

Searching

Condition

Basic format of a condition is:

PROPERTY.OPERATOR.VALUE

Any text can be specified as well (double-quoted if it contains spaces) and will be searched for anywhere in the note.

Property

Following properties are supported:

title	note’s title
body	note’s body
s	scheduled time
d	deadline time
c	closed time
i	specific state (is state)
it	state type
tn	note’s tag
t	note’s and inherited tag
p	priority
clocked	total clock time
clocking	currently clocked task
clockin	clock-in time
clockout	clock-out time

In addition, any specific note’s property can be used. (There could be conflicts.)

Operator

Following relational operators are supported:

eq	equal to
ne	not equal to
lt	less than
le	less than or equal to
gt	greater than
ge	greater than or equal to

Operator can be omitted in which case eq is assumed. For example, these two conditions are the same:

• t.eq.office
• t.office

The exceptions are s and d properties, for which default operator is le.

Value

For time-based properties (s, d, etc.), you can use values such as:

3d	three days from now
1w	one week from now
3m	three months from now
1y	one year from now
-5d	five days ago
today tod	today’s date
tomorrow tmrw tom	one day from now
yesterday	one day ago
now	today’s time
none no	value not set
2015-01-16	specific date

For searching by state (i) any string defined as either TODO or DONE state can be used as a value.

When searching by state type (it), there are three possible values:

done	notes with one of the DONE states
todo	notes with one of the TODO states
none	notes with no state set

When searching by tags (t or tn) a word containing any character except for space and : can be used.

Value for priority searching (p) is a character from a to z.

Multiple conditions

Multiple conditions can be specified at the same time. Conditions are separated with space or a logical operator.

Following logical operators are supported:

• not
• and
• or

not has higher precedence than and which has higher precedence then or.

Parentheses (( )) can be used to explicitly denote precedence by grouping parts of a condition that should be evaluated first.

Property can also be prepended with - (with no space in between) which is equivalent to using not before the condition. For example, these two conditions are the same:

• -i.done
• not i.done

If conditions are separated by space, logical and is assumed.

Helper conditions

due	s.le.today or d.le.today

More useful helpers?

Examples

it.todo -i.wait

Notes with a todo type of state, except WAIT

i.todo or i.next or i.wait

Notes with either TODO, NEXT or WAIT state set

i.next t.errand

NEXT notes tagged with errand

b.Home t.buy

Notes from Home notebook tagged with buy

i.wait

Notes with WAIT state

-it.done votes.gt.5

Tasks not done with votes property larger then 5

More useful examples?

Sorting

Notes are sorted by notebook name then priority. If s or d are used in the query, they are also sorted by scheduled or deadline time. They are always sorted by position in the notebook last.

You can change this behavior by using o operator.

o.PROPERTY	sort by property
-o.PROPERTY	sort by property (reverse order)

Following properties are supported:

b book notebook	notebook name
s sched scheduled	scheduled time
d dead deadline	deadline time
p pri prio priority	priority

Examples

o.book o.pri

Sort by notebook name then priority

o.book o.pri o.s

Sort by notebook name then priority then scheduled time

Agenda & Grouping

You can display an agenda for a specific period using:

a.PERIOD

Period can be for example:

-7d	from 7 days ago until today
-7d.-2d	from 7 days ago until 2 days ago
2015-01-01.2015-01-31	for a specific time period

Notes will be grouped by day.

You can change the grouping using:

g.GROUP

Supported groups are:

day	day
week	week
year	year
tag	tag

Does this even make sense?

Is “a” just a helper and grouping a separate feature?