In order to find content in an installation, ILIAS offer you three different search possibilities: a direct search, an index search and a Lucene search.[1] Although the Lucene search has to be configured additionally, it is nevertheless the first choice as a search tool for large installations as it delivers accurate search results even with large repositories. The Lucene search is also popular as it allows files to be searched for content irrespective of their format (PDF, Word, Excel...).  Less well known, however, is Lucene's extensive syntax that supports searching with placeholders and various operators. Here are some useful tricks for using a Lucene search!

The search box in ILIAS already offers not just the option of entering the term you are searching for, but also the possibility to restrict your search to a specific part of a repository, to search only within certain types of Object and, from ILIAS 5.1 onwards, to search only for Objects that were created before or after a certain date. On top of these features, the Lucene syntax also offers:

The Lucene search also supports wildcards. To do this, certain symbols are used to replace single or multiple characters (letters or numbers) within the search term, thereby increasing the number of hits.

Lucene searches also support the use of Boolean Operators such as AND or NOT. Using such operators allows you to define requirements and connections for your search terms.

And now..... have fun searching!

Thanks go to Stefan Meyer who has not only been the developer of the search for many years now, but also reminded me that I had already written about the Lucene search syntax in my ILIAS-Praxisbuch 2011 and could therefore reread that for today's blog post.