Wildcards in Query Text

You can use Wildcards in the Text parameter of the Query action.

You can use the Text action parameter to specify field restrictions for result documents, as long as the fields that you restrict results to are Index fields in the IDOL Content component. If you match fields, you can use Wildcards and match multiple fields simultaneously by separating them with colons.

Example Wildcard Queries

The following examples demonstrate how to use Wildcards in query text.

Example 1

action=Query&Text=Mi?rotech

This query returns documents that contain the term Mikrotech or Microtech.

Example 2

action=Query&Text="Co*ins":Name:Author+Arm?dale:Title

This query returns documents that contain a Name or Author field whose value matches the Wildcard string Co*ins (for example, Collins) and documents that contain a Title field whose value matches the Wildcard string Arm?dale (for example Armadale).

Example 3

Consider the following scenarios:

A. The IDOL Content component has two indexed documents. One document contains the word rollerskating, and the other contains the word rollerskaters (both of which stem to ROLLERSK).

B. The IDOL Content component has only one indexed document. It contains the word rollerskater (which also stems to ROLLERSK).

  • Send the following query:

    action=Query&Text=rollersk*

    This query returns all documents that contain any terms that stem to ROLLERSK. It returns both documents in situation A and the one document in situation B.

  • Send the following query:

    action=Query&Text=rollerskatin*

    A Wildcard query returns documents only if the Content index contains one or more matches to the Wildcard value. If the term matches, it is then stemmed, and all occurrences of the stem (in any document) are also considered matches.

    Therefore, this query returns both documents in situation A (because rollerskatin* matches rollerskating, and because it stems to ROLLERSK, which has matches in both documents). It does not return the document in situation B (because rollerskatin* does not match rollerskater).

  • Send the following query when the AdvancedSearch configuration parameter is set to True:

    action=Query&Text="rollerskatin*"

    This query returns documents that contain the Wildcard term. However, because AdvancedSearch is enabled and the Wildcard term is in quotation marks, this query does not return any further terms that match the stem of the expanded Wildcard term.

    Therefore, with this query, only the rollerskating document returns in situation A, and no document returns in situation B.