The default search interface is designed to showcase the search capabilities of the LucidWorks Platform. Queries can be entered in any way; the system will always make a "best effort" to interpret the query and return results.
 | The included LucidWorks Search UI requires that all queries include a search filter. A fresh installation of LucidWorks contains one search filter, called DEFAULT, that is allowed to search all documents and the default "admin" user is added to it. If users are not added to the DEFAULT filter (or another filter that searches all or a subset of documents), users may see no results at all for their queries. A best practice during your application development phase is to add all new users to the DEFAULT filter so they see all results. |
Elements of the Search Interface
The LucidWorks search interface is modeled after those found in many popular web search engines available today and its features should be familiar to most users. This section will focus on a simple explanation of the various parts of the search interface along with brief explanations of what each part does.
Query box
The query box is where users start their searches. A summary of options is below, If you are using the default 'lucid' query parser, you can see a detailed description of the allowed query syntax in the Lucid Query Parser Guide.
| Sample Query | How it Works |
|---|---|
| good dogs for children | find all words entered |
| "White House" | find words as a phrase |
| What is aspirin? | answer a question |
| +dog puppy -cat | use + or - to require or remove a word or phrase |
| (dog and puppy) OR (cat and kitten) | use boolean operators |
| psych* | find terms that start with the preceding string |
| [help:1993 to 1998] | find documents in a date range |
| ("dog food" NEAR "nutritional supplement") AND NOT cats | find words or phrases near each other |
| dog and title:retriever | specify a specific field to search |
Also note that links are available under the query box to allow users to save their searches as alerts or view previously saved alerts. Details of the Alerts user interface and options for administering them is described in Alerts.
Auto-Complete
If you enabled Auto-Complete, you will see a drop-down list of possible search terms while entering their query.
 | Number of Auto-Complete Results Currently, LucidWorks Enterprise only displays single term suggestions, based on the first letters entered for a query. |
Results
The search results area gives you information about documents that match a query. Snippets are shown of the document that contains some of the words entered by the user; those words are also highlighted to show the query terms in context.
By default, links to documents on a file system are enabled. Results from a database will not be linked. Results from an archive (that is, .zip, .tgz, or .gz files) will be shown on an intermediary screen to show the nesting of the files (particularly when there is an archive within an archive).
Sorting
LucidWorks includes the ability to sort by Relevance, Date, and Random. The default sort option is determined by the system administrator, but users can always choose to sort their results a different way by choosing one of the options on the screen.
Facets
Facets are groupings of results based on common attributes such as source or category and offer users an alternative way to drill down into their query results.
Spell Checking
If spell checking is enabled, users will see suggestions for alternate query terms.