ZxApp IT Users Guide

5.3. Searching For Data (And Replacing It)

ZxApp IT provides tools for performing localized text searches, of a single document for a single node.  It also provides tools for performing searches of the entire organizer. Lastly, ZxApp IT provides tools for performing searches for a particular database record (or set of records).  This section covers the first two types of searches.  Database record searching is covered in the section titled "Creating Relationships Between Types".



Local Node Document Search

To search the currently selected document, select Search->Find from the main menu (or press CONTROL-F).  The dialog box shown in Figure 5.3.1 will appear.  If any text is selected in the WYSIWYG editor, it will be used to pre-populate the Find textbox.  Options are available to make the search case sensitive/insensitive, and to search from the top of the document.



Figure 5.3.1: The Node Search Dialog Box.


Local Node Document Search and Replace

To perform a search and replace on the currently selected document, select Search->Replace from the main menu (or press CONTROL-R).  The dialog box shown in Figure 5.3.2 will appear.  If any text is selected in the WYSIWYG editor, it will be used to pre-populate the Find combo-box.  The search and replace dialog remembers prior text selections for both the Find combo-box and the Replace, and makes them available in the corresponding combo-box dropdowns.  Options are available to make the search and replace case sensitive/insensitive, and to search from the top of the document.  A wrap text option allows the user to replace text that is spanning multiple lines.



Figure 5.3.2: The Search and Replace Dialog Box.



Whole-Organizer Search

To search all nodes within the organizer, select Search->Find in Organizer.  The dialog box shown in Figure 5.3.3 will appear.  If any text is selected in the WYSIWYG editor, it will be used to pre-populate the Find textbox.  Options are available to make the search case sensitive/insensitive, and to search from the top of the document.



Figure 5.3.3: The Global Search Dialog Box.


The global search dialog has additional features and power not found in the localized search dialog.  It allows for multiple search terms.  Search terms can be matched using the following basic methods:


Substring -This method will return occurrences of the specified substring, regardless of where they occur within a document.


Whole Word - This method will return occurrences of the specified substring only if it is not proceeded by and/or following an alpha-numeric character.  In other words, it appears, gramatically speaking, to be a word.  For example, a whole word search on "chicken" would treat an occurrence of the phrase " chicken ", which has spaces on either side, as a match.  It would also treat the phrase " chicken," as a match, as well as "chicken." if it was at the beginning of a line.  It would not, however, treat " chickens" as a match, since the alpha-numeric character 's' is located immediately following the substring.


Phrase - This method breaks the the specified substring into a list of terms at each non-alpha-numeric character.  It then searches for that sequence of terms, separated by any sequence of non-alpha-numeric characters, including carriage returns.  This method is good for locating phrases that may or may not be broken up across multiple lines, or may have an unpredictable number of spaces between words.  For example, a whole word search on "I like apples" would consider "I,like,apples" to be a match.  It would also consider three subsequent lines with "I" on the first line, "like" on the second line, and "apples" on the third line, to be a match.  It would not, however, treat "I like red apples" to be a match, since the alpha-numeric sequence "red" is not a match.


Regex - This is the most complex and most powerful method for searching.  Regex expressions are a standardized expression language.  It is beyond the scope of this document to explain the use of regex expressions.


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