The DocGoblin search engine uses the open-source Apache Lucene search engine, allowing you to use all the options it offers.

In addition to simple searches consisting of one or more words, you can also add operators to your search to get more targeted results, exclude certain words, give more importance to others, or even search for entire phrases. These operators can be applied to any element or group of elements in your search.

Logical Operators

Prefixes + and –

If you simply enter words in the query field without using any search operators, you are indicating that you want to see all the results that contain any of these words.

Example: The search goblin human will return all pages containing the word goblin, the word human, or both.

To refine your search, use + to ensure that a word appears in the result, and - to exclude all results containing that element. You can apply these prefixes to only certain elements of your search or to all of them depending on your needs.

Example: The search +goblin +human will find all pages containing both the word goblin and the word human.
Example: The search +goblin -human will find results with goblin that do not include the word human.

Boolean Operators

Boolean operators are another way to modify your search and refine the results.

The following operators are available: AND, OR, and NOT. Their logic is quite similar to the prefixes + and -.

Example: If you search for goblin AND human, you will get results with both goblin and human, but none with only one of them. This is equivalent to +goblin +human.
Example: If you search for goblin OR human, it is equivalent to simply searching for goblin human, and you will get results that contain either or both.
Example: If you search for goblin NOT human, it is equivalent to searching for goblin -human. You will only get results that contain goblin and do not contain human.

Groups

Prefixes and Boolean operators are useful for refining your searches, but they are even more powerful when used together with parentheses to group your search elements.

Example: If you search for (goblin AND orc) OR (human AND dwarf), you will get results containing the words goblin and orc together or results containing the words human and dwarf together, or both. Using prefixes, you can also reformulate the search as follows to get the same results: (+goblin +orc) OR (+human +dwarf).
Example: If you search for (goblin AND orc) NOT human, you will get results containing the words goblin and orc but not the word human. The same search with prefixes would be written as follows: +goblin +orc -human.

Phrase Search

You may want to search for a phrase or a sequence of characters that are not recognized as a single word by the search engine. To perform this type of search, place the phrase you want to find between quotation marks: ".

Example: The search "once upon a time" will find all results that contain this exact phrase.

Of course, you can use the + and - prefixes as well as Boolean operators and groups with these phrases.

Fuzzy Searches

For some searches, you may want some flexibility in the search terms. For example, you might want to find slight variations of a word. To do this, you can use a fuzzy search with a tilde ~ and a number corresponding to the number of letter differences allowed: alternative~3.

Example: The search goblin~3 will find results containing words close to “goblin”, such as gobelin, goblins, and goblet.

Proximity Searches

If you want to find words close to each other, use a proximity search by adding a tilde ~ and a number after a phrase in quotation marks: "cheese charcuterie"~3.

Example: The search "cheese charcuterie"~3 will find documents containing these terms within three words or less of each other. For example, it will find the phrase I love cheese and charcuterie.

Term Prioritization

Finally, to refine your search even further, you can assign priorities to certain terms. This priority will give more importance to these terms in the search. This is particularly useful when you have many results and want to prioritize certain terms in the top results.

Example: If you use the following search: goblin human^3, the search will give three times more importance to the term human than to the term goblin.