How to exclude a Category from search or Search through all categories except one+

[Alimot_Akinbode]

I’m trying to exclude a category from but this feature does not seem to work.As an alternative, I also tried to search through multiple categories but this doesn’t work either. Is there a way around this?

[JammyDodger]

Hello and welcome @Alimot_Akinbode

The search doesn’t currently support those features, however we do have a new set of topic filters which has more scope for that sort of combination (which will hopefully become part of the search as well at some point ).

We have them enabled on Meta at the moment at if you want to check them out. https://meta.discourse.org/filter

And you can read more about them in:

Experimental topics list filter feature

We have recently introduced an innovative /filter route, enabling more sophisticated filtering of the topics list. Significantly, this marks the initial step towards a unified topic filtering language for both search and filtering. Additionally, the dedicated route for topic list filtering enhances the customizability of the sidebar, as users can now incorporate links as custom section links within the sidebar. How to turn it on Enable the experimental_topics_filter site settings in the admin …

[Alimot_Akinbode]

Thank you @JammyDodger . I just checked this out and it’s looks good. However, I’ll like to know if this has a json endpoint just like /search.json