Advanced Searching using CQL

Performing text searches using CQL

This page provides information on how to perform text searches. It applies to advanced searches when used with the CONTAINS operator.

Acknowledgements:

Confluence uses Apache Lucene for text indexing, which provides a rich query language. Much of the information on this page is derived from the Query Parser Syntax page of the Lucene documentation.

Query terms

A query is broken up into terms and operators. There are two types of terms: Single Terms and Phrases.

A Single Term is a single word such as "test" or "hello".

A Phrase is a group of words surrounded by double quotes such as "hello dolly".

Note: All query terms in Confluence are case insensitive.

Term modifiers

Confluence supports modifying query terms to provide a wide range of searching options.

Related topics:

Wildcard searches: ? and *

Confluence supports single and multiple character wildcard searches.

To perform a single character wildcard search use the "?" symbol.

To perform a multiple character wildcard search use the "*" symbol.

Wildcard characters need to be enclosed in quote-marks, as they are reserved characters in advanced search. Use quotations, e.g. summary ~ "cha?k and che*"

The single character wildcard search looks for terms that match that with the single character replaced. For example, to search for "text" or "test" you can use the search:

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te?t

Multiple character wildcard searches looks for 0 or more characters. For example, to search for Windows, Win95 or WindowsNT you can use the search:

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win*

You can also use the wildcard searches in the middle of a term. For example, to search for Win95 or Windows95 you can use the search

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wi*95

You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search. The feature request for this is JRA-6218

Fuzzy searches: ~

Confluence supports fuzzy searches. To do a fuzzy search use the tilde, "~", symbol at the end of a single word term. For example to search for a term similar in spelling to "roam" use the fuzzy search:

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roam~

This search will find terms like foam and roams.

Note: terms found by the fuzzy search will automatically get a boost factor of 0.2

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