Image Search

Image Search for Four branches Genealogy


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Standard Image Searches

The standard search action will search for the complete search string you enter

Example:  search string „sun“ will search for all images having this text string „sun“ contained in either title, description, filename or tags. It will find terms like ‚morning sun‘, ’sunset‘, ’sunday‘, ’sunglasses‘ etc.. The search string may also have leading or trailing blanks. So the search string „ sun “ will only find the term ‚morning sun ‚, but not terms like ’sunset‘, ’sunday‘ etc..

Currently in addition to the complete search string there are some special search codes available:

  1. r:<nn>
    This will search for the <nn> most recent images.
    Here the term ‚recent images‘ is used by the gallery, i.e. it looks for the images with the most recent image dates (image dates as given by the image exif data).
    Example:  r:15  will search for the 15 most recent images.
  2. l:<nn>
    This will search for the <nn> last uploaded images.
    When uploading, the gallery will automatically incremented picture ids = pid.
    Example:  l:15  will search for the 15 last uploaded images independent of their image date.
  3. g:<nn>
    This will search for all images in gallery <nn>.
    By default this search option is only available for logged in users.
    Also by default, it will even list excluded images. As mentioned above, the gallery is only listed if this gallery is not being excluded by webmasters settings.
    Example: g:3  will list all images of gallery 3.

Advanced Image Searches

Standard searches only search the complete search string. In contrast to this advanced searches search for a free combination of search strings.

Example: „sun & city & street“ will search for images which have all  three terms in any of their fields title, description, filename or tags. Here the operator“ & “ stands for a logical AND and must have a trailing and a leading blank to be correctly recognized.

You can use any combination of search strings including special codes.

Example: „r:30 & tree & big“ will search for all images with reference to the strings ‚tree‘ and ‚big‘ and will list the 30 most recent found images.

Advanced searches can also use the exclusion operator“ -& „.

Example: „city & long street -& car“ will list all images with reference to ‚city‘ and ‚long street‘ which do not refer to the string ‚car‘.

Not all formally possible advanced searches are meaningful if combined with special search codes:

Example: „r:30 & l:30 & tree“ does not make sense, because you cannot sort the search list by date (r:30) and by upload order (l:30).

Finally, the search operators  ‚&‘ and ‚-&‘ can also be used at the beginning of the search string. However, ‚&‘ at the beginning will have no effect, as it does not change anything (the following search term will be searched anyway).

Example: „-& red sunset“ will search for all images not referring to ‚red sunset‘. In this case the search operator must not have a leading blank.

Complex Image Searches

The symbols “ & “ and “ -& “ refer their search to all search fields (title, description, filename and tags), the following symbols

„ &a “ and „ -&a “  only refer to the field title (=alternate)
“ &d “ and “ -&d “ only refer to the field description
“ &f “ and “ -&f “ only refer to the field filename
“ &t “ and “ -&t “ only refer to tags of an image

Complex searches can use any order of combining symbols. By also including empty search strings or only blanks the complex searches can become quite tricky.

The symbols can also be used at the beginning of a search string, in that case only without a leading blank.

Example: „r:10 &t sunset -&t sea“ will search for images with tag ’sunset‘, which do not have a tag ’sea‘ at the same time. The result list will return the 10 most recent images.
Example „g:5 & r:3“  will return the three most recent images in gallery 5.

In principle you can also search for an empty search string.  However, an empty search string is contained in any search field, so this does not make much sense. There is only one exception coded when an empty search string is restricted to tags:
Operator ‚&t‘ will search for images having ANY tags and ‚-&t‘ will search for images having NO TAGS at all.

Example „g:5 &t “ will search for all images in gallery 5, which have some tags.
Example „g:5 -&t “ will search for all images in gallery 5, which do not have any tags at all.