Should search limited to category also search subcategories?

feature
1

I have a category for challenges/assignments that is empty except for its subcategories. I thought that I could search that category and find things in subcategories, but I can’t.

Here on meta, click on #plugin and search for “discord” you can find “Discourse to Discord bot” post, but if you search the plugin category, it goes away. It’d be cool if I could search across all those categories.

7 Likes
2

Hmm yeh, haven’t really encountered this before but I think searching category+sub-categories by default makes sense. We’d have to come up with some sort of syntax for when you only want to search the parent category though, like category:plugin+none

2 Likes
3

This is now supported as per this change by @sam

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/df8f365d999e113615c51efee4cfa3115c267783

So:

To search #howto and all sub categories use

something #howto

OR

something category:howto

To restrict it so you only search the category #howto without children use:

something #=howto

OR

something category:=howto

We still need to decide what to do about the “search this category” checkbox.

6 Likes
4

Is there room for two check boxes?

5

When is two checkboxes ever the right choice?

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6

Sounds compelling. In that case, I vote for the check box to include subcategories.

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7

You mean to exclude? As it is included by default now…

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8

I think he means this :slight_smile:

I also think include by default is probably a better call

“Search the #howto category” may need slightly better wording though.

7 Likes