Categories versus Custom Meta Fields

[AndrewD]

I just tried that last described scenario on all the platforms (PHP, ASP, CGI and JS), but it seemed to work as you wanted and returned results.

Ray, you are correct - Zoom 6.1010 does work the way you say - searches which specify a blank search field but restrict the search to a category do return a list of all documents in that category. I'm sorry, it was my mistake.

But - although I tied myself in knots while trying to sort this out, I think I have uncovered a real bug with the cgi interface and custom field searches. It seems fully reproducible for a given search yet also unpredictable and somewhat obscure. I will send full details by email.

thanks and apologies.

[Ray]

I just tried that last described scenario on all the platforms (PHP, ASP, CGI and JS), but it seemed to work as you wanted and returned results.

I think I found a bug with the JavaScript platform, where it would not return results with: blank search field, empty meta fields, all categories selected, and "match all search words" checked (as opposed to "match any"). But this doesn't match your description, so it seems to be a different problem.

Can you check if you are using the latest build available (see the What's New page). And if so, tell us which script platform you are using. It may also help if you send us your ZCFG file in case it's a special combination of settings.

[AndrewD]

We really like the custom meta field features added in Zoom 6, particularly now that the early bugs have been ironed out.

There is one point that is potentially confusing to our users, and I wonder if you can help me understand/perhaps consider a further update.

We structure our Zoom indexes by providing .desc files. These contain custom meta fields where relevant; the normal metadata fields (author, etc); and one or more ZOOMCATEGORY meta fields.

As a result, when users submit searches:

1) If the search form field contains something, the search works correctly, and returns a list of all documents containing the search terms (plus context). Any further selections (e.g. category or custom meta field) act as filters on the main search.

2) If the search form field is left empty, the search will still work correctly (excluding context), provided that at least one of the custom meta fields is completed. So the user can easily find all documents that match one of the custom meta fields.

So far, so good.

3) However, if they attempt to find all documents in a given category (by leaving the search form field and all custom meta fields empty and only selecting a category), the search will return no results. This seems a bit illogical given (1) and (2), although I know that it is fully consistent with the previous behaviour of Zoom 5.

I suppose we could get consistent behaviour, i.e. the possibility to find all documents in a category, by changing the ZOOMCATEGORY tags into a new multi-select custom meta field? Alternatively, would it be possible to modify Zoom's behaviour, so that blank searches filtered by category actually do return a list of all documents in that category, without context?

thanks