Indexed Search Syntax

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Revision as of 11:09, 28 October 2007 by Foolip (talk | contribs) (added pseudo-release code (Imported from MoinMoin))
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Attention.png Status: Currently under development. Please help copy and adapt the lucene query syntax docs to our needs!

While we contruct this help page, please see the lucene query syntax page for details on how to construct MusicBrainz text search queries.

Overview

Lucene offers a large flexibility in defining search queries for all needs imaginable. To make it easier to understand, this page was divided into subpages. While this one offers an introduction to the most commonly used features, the others explain more advanced search operators and constructs.

First some words on the the terminology used in these pages:

Query
A query is the complete expression you put in one of the search fields.
Term
A term is the smallest unit inside a query. In the default case each single word inside a query is a term of it's own, except for ...
Phrases
A phrase is a groups of words surrounded by quotation marks. Even though it's containing more than one word, a phrase is handled like a term.
Operators
or search operators are special characters and words that define either how single terms are processed by the search system (e.g. in -house the - tells the search system, not to return anything with the word house) or how to terms are to be combined in the search (e.g. one AND love means search for anything that has both words one and love).

The sections below Query Syntax describe simple and commonly used operators, in /AdvancedSyntax you'll find the more complicated and seldomly needed features of the search interface.

But first take a look at a few simple examples which might show everything necessary for the majority of your searches.

Example searches

Artists

  • tori amos - search artist, sortname and alias fields
  • comment:electronic - search for the word electronic in artist disambiguation (comment) fields

Albums

  • café del mar - search for all Café del Mar albums
  • "the understanding" AND artist:royksopp - search for the album The Understanding by Röyksopp

Tracks

  • day life will retrieve A Day In The Life and Life In A Day but also This Day and That's Life
  • day AND life will retrieve A Day In The Life and Life In A Day but not This Day or That's Life
  • "day in the life" will retrieve A Day In The Life but not Life In A Day or This Day or That's Life
  • "voodoo people" AND artist:"the prodigy" - search for all tracks Voodoo People by The Prodigy

TODO: add more here!

Query syntax

Wildcards

To perform a single character wildcard search use the "?" symbol. To perform a multiple character wildcard search use the "*" symbol. For example, to search for "text" or "test" you can use the search te?t, to search for "test", "tests" or "tester", you can use the search test*.

Note: You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search.

Fuzzy searches

To do a fuzzy search use the tilde, "~", symbol at the end of a single word term. Optionally can specify the required similarity, a value is between 0 and 1. For example to search for a term similar in spelling to "roam" use the fuzzy search roam~ or roam~0.8

Boolean operators

Boosting a term

Grouping

MusicBrainz specific search fields

The artist index contains the following fields you can search:

field Description
arid artist id
artist artist name
sortname artist sortname
artype artist type (0 - unknown, 1 - person, 2 - band)
begin artist birth date/band founding date
end artist death date/band dissoluion date
comment artist comment to differentiate similar artists
alias the aliases/misspellings for this artist

Artist search terms with no fields specified search the artist, sortname and alias fields.

The release/album index contains theses fields:

field Description
reid release id
release release name
arid artist id
artist artist name
type release type (1 - album, 2 - single, etc.[1])
status release status (1 - official, 2 - promo, 3 - bootleg, 4 - pseudo-release)
tracks number of tracks in the release
discids number of cd ids for the release
date earliest release date for the release
asin the Amazon ASIN for
lang The language for this release (18 - Arabic, 76 - Chinese, 100 - Danish, 113 - Dutch/Flemish, 120 - English, 131 - Finnish, 134 - French, 145 - German, 176 - Hungarian, 195 - Italian, 198 - Japanese, 239 - Latvian, 309 - Norwegian, 338 - Polish, 340 - Portuguese, 353 - Russian, 393 - Spanish/Castilian, 403 - Swedish, 433 - Turkish, 284 - [Multiple languages])
script The script used for this release

Template:FootNote

Album search terms with no fields search the release field only.

And track searches can contain:

field Description
trid track id
track track name
arid artist id
artist artist name
reid release id
release release name
type release type (1 - album, 2 - single, etc.)
tracks number of tracks in the release
dur duration of track in milliseconds
qdur quantized duration (duration / 2000)
tnum track number

Track search terms with no fields search the track field only.

Questions

If you know the answer to these, please remove the question and integrate the answer into the docs above.

  • What is the difference between the "Indexed Search" and the "Direct Search"? I cannot find it explained anywhere. --DonRedman
    • The "Indexed Search" is the Lucene search, it's retrived from the lucene indexed database that only updates once a day. The "Direct Search" is the 'old' search, it utelizes the MusicBrainz database itself to search, henche it reflects imidiate changes, but it is not as 'smart' ~mo
  • Is there a way to search for an album based on its length? I'm currently grabbing all results and filtering them by summing their track durations. Is the value computed on the fly from the tracks for each release page? --ChrisColvard
  1. 1 - Album, 2 - Single, 3 - EP, 4 - Compilation, 5 - Soundtrack, 6 - Spokenword, 7 - Interview, 8 - Audiobook, 9 - Live, 10 - Remix, 11 - Other