Search All Plugin
The Search All Plugin (download zip, view source) adds capability to search pages, attachments, draft posts, and comments to the WP default search, with an admin console to contol search options.
Installation is simple. Download the archive file and extract it. Copy the search_all.php file to your plugins directory. Enable the plugin and visit the options page to set the options.
Option Descriptions
- Search Pages - search the content of pages for the searched for string
- Search Comments - search for posts with comment containing the searched for string
- Approved Comments Only - if checked will only check the contents of approved comments; otherwise will search all comments
- Search Drafts - include posts with Draft status in the search
- Search Attachments - include uploaded file’s title’s and descriptions for the searched for string.
Each checked option will be added to the default WordPress search function.
Change Log
Version 0.1
- initial release
Version 0.2
- fixed comment search bug
Version 0.3
- removed requirement for searchform.php
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Dan Cameron for Search Everything, and via Search Everything, thanks to to David B. Nagle for Search Pages and before that to Rob Schlüter for this hack.
This plugin discards some of the options for exact and sentence searches included in Search Everything because there’s apparently no way for user easily to access these options (aside from typing into the URL). It also removes some of the query-string safety functions in Search Everything, because it seems to me that those are adequately handled in the wp-db class in WordPress.
Support
Please leave a comment below.
RSS 2
April 1st, 2006 at 8:55 am
Thanks for adding the updates. It works great.
April 1st, 2006 at 10:10 am
Sounds great. I cant help wondering if Wordpress plugins which add extra functionality to the core of Wordpress, such as this plugin, add any extra security holes to a wordpress site?
It’s easy to add lots of plugins to several Wordpress sites that one looks after but is adding more creating more work to keep them all up to date?
Forgive me if I am way of mark here.
thanks all the same, I shall be installing and testing soon to one of my sites!
Mike
April 1st, 2006 at 10:32 am
Bob- Thanks, glad you like it. Your idea about styling the different sorts of searches is a good one and I hope to code it in soon.
Mike - The way the searches work is to add some “where” clauses to the MySQL query that selects the list of posts to display. Wordpress core code already deals fairly well with the risks involved with SQL injection vulnerabilities for database queries, so I don’t think this one adds a significant risk. Other plugins may (and some probably do) increase security vulnerability. And yes, having a lot of plugins can be kind of a hassle. It’d be nice if there was some sort of plugin auto-update feature builtin (or perhaps there is and I don’t know about it).
April 1st, 2006 at 10:45 am
Thanks
I found an easy way to differentiate between pages and posts using the $post->post_status variable (which is ’static’ for pages), but I’m not sure if there is a similarly easy thing that can be done to tell if it is a comment.
April 1st, 2006 at 11:00 am
Awesome work. I’ve just pushed the plugin aside too long, now you’ve made me get to work.
April 1st, 2006 at 11:17 am
I have installed it and it works, nice. Thanks.
What would be really nice is the ability to highlight the searched words in the displayed results.
Guess this might not be easy though.
Mike
April 2nd, 2006 at 11:55 pm
Cori,
Thanks for taking up the development of this plugin–I think it’s essential and am a little disappointed the functionality was not included in WP2.0.
I installed the plugin on a test blog: justinandkate.com. It works well except that for some reason it won’t search comments regardless of the checkboxes in the admin area. Any ideas?
April 3rd, 2006 at 11:02 pm
Thanks to Justin, who caught a bug and also tested it for me.
The comments search didn’t work - the database query didn’t have any wildcard characters. Entertainingly enough, my main tests were done on a site with few comments, and I was searching for a word that was also the entire comment, so it worked there.
Version 0.2 posted for download.
April 9th, 2006 at 5:04 am
Hi Dan!
How about searching category-descriptions? Is this possible with a hack?
Reagrds!
Jens
April 9th, 2006 at 5:46 am
It doesn’t work on Blix theme. It couldn’t find anything in comments even though I had checked it.
April 22nd, 2006 at 8:25 pm
Hi,
I’ve uploaded this plugin - it’s great BUT, the search results are the complete post or page rather than a few lines of text like yours. Any ideas how I do this? I am using the most recent version of WP but a customised theme.
April 22nd, 2006 at 9:05 pm
Darren;
Can I get your url so I can take a look?
Jens;
No hack that I know of to search categories, but it’s probably possible.
I’m Cori, not Dan
Rimmon;
I don’t use Blix, but when I have a few moments I’ll take a look.
May 7th, 2006 at 9:25 am
hi
i installed the plugin on my local machine. i tried searchind for a comment string from my website(local machine again) but it returns nothing.i am using wordpress 1.5. also when i goto the optins page, i only see the check boxes and no text box. how do i make this work on my site????
May 14th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
kiran;
I don’t know what to say about the comment search functionality; it works fine on the several sites and themes I’ve since tested it on. Can you tell me what theme you’re using? I’d like to install it and Blix and see what I can figure out.
As far as the missing text box, that was a feature I hadn’t tested on any theme aside from my own mod of the WP-Default theme which has been the only theme at elliptical… since I opened the site. That oversight meant that I assumed that something was part of the default wp install that wasn’t; I’ve fixed this in version 0.3 that’s available to download now (this is the only change in 0.3).
Please give it a try and let me know how it goes…..
May 14th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
cori,
I’m new to Wordpress, just installed 2.0 and your plug-in…but can’t get it working…
I activated it and set all the options, but still don’t see any results for text strings that I put into the few posts that I’ve made tonight.
Please help? This is going to be a church site for some friends of ours (test URL is here: http://www.robinsonstudio.net/clients/stjames/stjames/)
Many thanks ~
May 14th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
*update* … I’m now getting results for posts that are “uncategorized” only, but not if they have other categories assigned (such as “events” or “staff”).
I tried making “staff” a child category of “uncategorized” to see if that would work, but still no results for anything other than posts that are “uncategorized”.
May 14th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
Hi Mark;
Can you post a link a snapshot of the options page? Trying it out on your site and I can certainly get returns on pages, but don’t see posts returned.
May 15th, 2006 at 8:25 pm
Hi Cori,
Here’s a screen shot of the Search All options page:
http://www.robinsonstudio.net/clients/stjames/stjames/stjames-options.gif
I’ve selected almost every option; could that cause a conflict? Are future events (my posts with a future date) even searchable?
Thanks again,
~M
May 15th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
OK, Mark, now we’re getting somewhere.
Looking at the last post in your upcoming events category I see that you have some posts set for future dates. I suspect that whatever’s keeping them off the blog’s front page may be interfering with the search feature as well.
I don’t pay any attention to the date of the post, but I only select posts where the status is “published”, “static”, “draft”, or “attachment”, depending on your settings. I wonder what the statuses of the posts in your upcoming events category are? I also note that I can see the posts in the category archive but not on the front page and when I try to get the single-post view of the post I get a 404 error. Why is that, do you think?
In my tests, selecting every option works just fine.
May 15th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
Since I only have two plugins added to the Default theme, I thought that the EventCalendar plugin might be the problem…so I changed its option from “Keep events separate” to “Events are normal posts”. I assumed this would fix it, but no joy.
I must have tripped up when I first set up the WP 2.0 install ~ I’m going to wipe the whole directory and start fresh, only installing your plugin. Perhaps then we’ll be able to isolate the trouble.
I appreciate your help, and the time it must take to write a plugin.
~M
July 5th, 2006 at 2:48 am
any chance to get this plugin to search for tags too? would be great.
July 5th, 2006 at 6:48 am
ovidiu;
I’ve thought about that, but I think it’d be fairly difficult because there are so many way to attach tags, essentially all of which are plugins vs WP core code. So each one would be likely to have a different mechanism for storing the tags and each would its own way of searching for them.
For example, how do you tag your posts?
July 5th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
now that you say so I can see the truth of your words,…
I use UTW ultimate tag warrior for tagging…
the reason I am asking for this feature is that I use a tag cloud and would like to combine it with the search function which actually works except for the fact that searching for tags does not.
July 16th, 2006 at 11:42 am
Hey Cori,
I’ve just installed wordpress 2.0 on my website/blog and was wondering if it was possible to be able to put the search field on all pages. I’m not referring to searching all pages, which I want, but actually putting a search textbox on all my pages so someone can search whether they are on the blog portion of my site or not. My “index” page or first page, is not my blog. You can take a look at my site and click on “Toggle Search” and you’ll understand where exactly I’d like to put the search feature. I’m guessing using an absolute path to the search function of wordpress would do the trick?
July 17th, 2006 at 4:27 am
Hi Amit;
I don’t think an absolute-path include of the search page will be sufficient in this case - you’d be missing a lot of the object includes that are prerequisites to the actual search features.
In order to use the WordPress search outside the WP architecture you’ll need to make sure you have handles on the critical objects for the search to work. That’s at least the stuff in wp-db.php, because search uses the gloal $wp-db object, but probably a few other things as well; I don’t know off-hand. Search (and Search-All.php) uses a few hooks that aren’t in wp-db.php.
Your best bet would be to look at the hooks and filters I’m using and to search one of the source repositories to find out where those hooks and filters are defined. There’s a good cross-reference of the latest trunk of code at taragana.net. Since it’s trunk it doesn’t match what I’m running precisely, but it’s close enough for exploration.
July 27th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Is it a bug or limitation that for the search results loop, is_page() is NOT set when it finds a page?
I guess you are just extending the mysql query but there’s no way to filter the results?
I guess I can test for a date before 2000 which would make it a page vs a post (if I can figure out the code in less than an hour
Apologies for this next question as I bet it’s been asked before but darn if I can find the answer.
How can I (easily) give the visitor the option of searching comments (or not) via a checkbox added to the search form? Is there a way to hook into your routine to toggle that specific area on and off? I don’t suppose a form field of “comments_approved” with a value of 1 (or 0 ) would work, too easy?
July 27th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
Um, neither? I suppose it could be thought of as a limitation - I just never considered it very important to delineate between pages and posts. You can test for it in wp_posts, post_status = Static, which means it’s a page. I’m not sure what you’re looking for for the is_page() functionality in the results - can you be a little more specific?
As far as searching for comments is concerned there’s not much you can do at the search form stage - those options are currently only handled in the admin page, and the search filters check the database for their status when filtering the results. I’d have to add in the ability to check for post variables in addition to database values in order to account for that.
July 28th, 2006 at 7:49 am
The problem with is_page() not being set for a “page” search result is that the date will attempt to be shown for what wordpress thinks is a “post”.
So people end up seeing a search result with a date of 1969 for a “page”. It’s ugly.
I guess I can modify my template to directly check post_status for static but that kind of defeats the purpose of is_page()
Not sure about others, but I’d definitely like to give the website visitor the option of excluding or including comments so they can limit their search results if they get too many. We had that option with movabletype and I miss it in WP. We also had the option of using regex/logic in the searchbox (ie. ANDing NOTs and ORing the search terms) but I guess that is a WP feature that is far off in the future.
On another feature thought, I pondered for awhile about how to make WP highlight the search terms in the results but because it uses a function call that also serves as a hook, I guess I can’t replace it in my template. Perhaps as a new plugin feature idea to pre-filters the results. I don’t suppose you are up for adding such an ability? I guess it would be best as a separate plugin and not put into SearchAll.
ps. do you know if SearchAll is 2.1 compatible? I don’t see it on this list yet
http://codex.wordpress.org/User:Spencerp/2.1alpha1_Plugin_Compatibility
and I was considering giving it a shot this weekend
August 3rd, 2006 at 9:30 am
Plugin is not compatible with Ocadia Theme.. cannot seem to get it to work with Pages Or Comments.
August 11th, 2006 at 11:09 am
only a question
function SEv_log($msg)
what it does?
is this that memorize the status of options selected?
August 16th, 2006 at 2:46 am
hey cori. i created a custom theme — is there something special that i need to include in my search template??? i can’t get it to search anything but posts — no pages, comments, etc.
thanks in advance.
August 19th, 2006 at 8:34 am
Hi, nice work on this.
I believe I found a bug in 0.3 where even if “search draft” is UNchecked, if a term appears in a comment on a draft, it will still return the result. That is definitely undesired behavior.
I’m looking through the code for a fix now but just wanted to let you know about this asap.
December 6th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Hi, thanks it is a great plugin.
I would like to ask you if will be any way to use it with wordpress mu (multy user). I’m looking for a pluging or hack to have the possibily to make search across a blog comunity using tags too. Any clues will be wellcome, Thanks. Can I use all search for this?
Thanks again for your work
January 24th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
I’ve been using the Search All plugin for a while and like it a lot, but It’s not working with WP 2.1
When searching for a term it brings up multiple results of the same posts.
I’m looking forward to an updated one.
February 28th, 2007 at 12:01 am
Hi there,
I *love* this plugin - does just what I wanted
One thing though - I’d like to be able to tell if a result is a page or something else (i.e. post or comment)… I don’t really understand the whole debate about about checking is it’s “static” as I’m not much of a coder… Would anyone be able to just tell me, if I have the following code what expression do I use instead of CONDITION to check whether it’s a page? If it’s a page CONDITION should be true (i.e. “format the result one way”) otherwise it’ll be false (i.e. “format the result another”).
// format the result one way
// format the result another
Thanks so much in advance for your help and the AMAZING PLUGIN
Guy
February 28th, 2007 at 12:04 am
Hmm, my code didn’t show up, must have been stripped during posting… it was basically a PHP statement that said:
If CONDITION {
// format the result one way
} Else {
// format the result another
}
So it’s just a PHP expression I need for CONDITION
Thanks,
Guy
March 14th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Howdy Cory& the others,
thanks for this neat piece of code.
Is there any way to customize this plugin in a way that I could search other tables, like some made by other plugins?
April 21st, 2007 at 11:33 am
Perhaps you can help, either I did something wrong or your great plugin is simply not compatible with the template I’m using: Green - Elegancy 2.3 by Viajes
The search box does not show up on the page, not even in the Search all options page although there I do see the various checkboxes to allow me to search different things like pages, attachments, comments etc. The plugin has been activated but will not display, any ideas?
Thanks!
Steve C.
April 21st, 2007 at 11:35 am
Oh, one thing I forgot to add if it makes a difference, I’m on Mac using Firefox
Steve C.
May 14th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Can’t get it working. Dan’s plugin worked fine untill a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t even upgrade or something, just running 2.1. Now I tried yours, I only need search pages besides blog but it does not work. I tested it in Modern Theme plus in the latest K2 nighty built. Hopefully WP will include this very important function, working…