Contents

Menu commands

• Showing the search dialog
• Searching for same artist (or other field)
• Showing the help file

Search dialog

• Builtin keyboard shortcuts
• Builtin filter modes
  • All items
  • Dead items
  • Infoless items
  • Find exact text
  • Find prefix text
  • Word based modes: Find all words, Find any word and Find most words

Preferences

FAQ

• "I don't get any results when searching the database!"
• "The help command does not work!"

Menu commands

Showing the search dialog

Choose Components/Database search from the main menu to show the search dialog.

Searching for same artist (or other field)

To search the database for songs with the same artist as a given song, select that song (either in playlist, albumlist, or any other place that allows the use of standard foobar2000 context menu commands) and choose Search for same/Artist from the context menu. This command only shows up, if you have a format preset called "artist" (chararcter case is ignored, so it may be called "Artist" as well) and the Search for same submenu is inserted into the context menu. In addition, the "artist" preset has to be enabled for the context menu in the Database search preferences.

The Search for same/More... command lets you choose an arbitrary format preset to use for the search. Additionally, you can define your own format presets and enable them to be directly available in the Search for same submenu.

Showing the help file

To show the help file, run the Components/Help/Database search help command from the main menu.

Search dialog

Builtin keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts that are available in the search, format, pattern, and filter mode fields only:

• Enter: Refreshes the search results and adds the current pattern to the list of recently used patterns.

Keyboard shortcuts that are available in the resultlist only:

• Enter: Runs the configured default action on the selected results.
• Control+A: Select all results.
• a character: Jumps to the next result that starts with this character.

Keyboard shortcuts that are available in the whole dialog:

• Shift+Enter: Appends all the results to the current playlist.
• Control+Enter: Runs the Send to playlist... command on all the results.

The All items filter mode

This filter always returns true, so all items pass the test.

The Infoless items filter mode

This filter tests whether information about an item is available in the database. If no information is available, the item passes the test.

The Find exact text filter mode

This filter applies the format given in the format field to any item that is tested. If the content of the pattern field is identical to the resulting string (ignoring character case), the item passes the test. If the pattern field is empty, no item passes the test.

Example:

• Format used: [%artist%]
• Pattern: dave matthews
• Result: Only songs from Dave Matthews, but not from Dave Matthews Band or Dave.

The Find prefix text filter mode

This filter applies the format given in the format field to any item that is tested. If the content of the pattern field is a prefix of the resulting string (ignoring character case), the item passes the test. If the pattern field is empty, no item passes the test.

Example:

• Format used: [%artist%]
• Pattern: dave matthews
• Result: Only songs from Dave Matthews and from Dave Matthews Band, but not from Tim Reynolds & Dave Matthews. And no songs from Dave either.
  (Yes, I know, it's normally Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds, but this is an example. OK?)

The Find all words, Find any word and Find most words filter modes

more to come...

Preferences

more to come...

FAQ

"I don't get any results when searching the database!"

Go to Preferences/Media Library and check the settings there. You need to have at least one directory added there.

"The help command does not work!"

The help command opens the online help file, so you need to be connected to the internet. If your browser displays a "File not found" error, check the URL first: if it points to www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~uzbs/fb2k/html/foo_dbsearch_help.html you should get a newer version of the component. Otherwise please post about this in the Database search thread on the foobar2000 forum; your post should include the URL the component tried to open.

more to come...