Searching documents

DOCman works seamlessly with Joomla’s built-in search functionality. For better results DOCman also provides its own custom search in list views.

Document indexing: with Joomlatools Connect you can search for text inside DOCman files. Searching indexed files is supported through Smart Search, good old Joomla search, or DOCman’s built-in search.

Joomla's built-in search

Default installation of DOCman has 2 plugins that make it possible to search documents through Smart Search and good old Joomla search.

No DOCman specific configuration is required for this feature to work. The search results link directly to the document files.

DOCman's built-in search

DOCman has its own specialized search feature on each of the Hierarchical, Flat and Tree list views in the front-end.

When you are creating a menu item to these views:

1. Go to the DOCman tab and set the Enable document search option to Yes.
2. Select the search type, Search for documents that contain… you can choose between; The exact phrase, Any of the words or All of the words.
3. Enable the search filters that you'd like to display, you can show a category selector, tag selector, date selector and document owner selector. 
4. If you have the Connect plugin installed you'll also be able to enable the filter to allow your users to search in document contents (if you don't have Connect installed this selector will not display in the search options whether or not it's enabled).

5. Go to the menu item in the front-end and see all the search options.

You can filter documents by any combination of the document's title, description, and the enabled search filters. Search results render within the same page which means the menu item settings are all preserved.

Search prefixes for fine-tuned filtering

In the DOCman administrator documents' list, search prefixes make it easier to search through your documents, filter them and find exactly what you are looking for.

Here are a few example search terms showing how to use search prefixes:

• 'title:title you are looking for'
• 'description:only search in description'
• 'id:123'
• 'foo :or bar' - documents with titles or descriptions that match foo OR bar
• 'foo :and bar' - documents with titles or descriptions that match foo AND bar