Searching in PMs

[Michaela.Skokanova]

Hi, I wanted to ask if it is possible to implement some way to search in private messages? Filter by the sender or so? Thanks!

[Deactivated 140246]

Is this a support question for your board or a suggestion for adding a new feature?
Support questions must be asked at: https://www.phpbb.com/community/
What you need will require an extension, which you can request on the community board.

If this is a suggestion of something to add to phpbb4, it does read like a good suggestion. Email accounts usually have search functions, so why not PMs? If someone gets lots of PMs, it can be useful.

[P_I]

For what it is worth https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2263011. Agreed this should be core phpBB functionality and since the extension was abandoned, perhaps the phpBB development team would consider making it part of phpBB 4

[hanakin]

Not sure who said that, but we do need to eventually overhaul the current search capabilities of phpBB to be more universal with more control over what content to search so this could easily be added into that possibly. https://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopi ... bb262ebcbc

[AmigoJack]

I did in Re: [GSoC] Search Backend Refactoring 6+ years ago.

On my board I implemented it as similar as the board search: keywords and/or authors, and filters. It is an additional module and the search results are a list of PMs which also show their folder (also all PM folder "tabs" were matches were found are highlighted). Came in handy since then when you store 3000+ PMs. And also implemented keyword searches on the other areas mentioned, too.

[koraldon]

Why was that RFC abandoned ?

[DavidIQ]

See the last active date of the topic starter.

[hanakin]

I did in Re: [GSoC] Search Backend Refactoring 6+ years ago.

On my board I implemented it as similar as the board search: keywords and/or authors, and filters. It is an additional module and the search results are a list of PMs which also show their folder (also all PM folder "tabs" were matches were found are highlighted). Came in handy since then when you store 3000+ PMs. And also implemented keyword searches on the other areas mentioned, too.

Mind providing a pr or code for this

[AmigoJack]

I've created

• \includes\search\fulltext_mysql_pm.php which is largely a copy of \includes\search\fulltext_mysql.php and makes use of authors, keywords and splits
• \includes\ucp\ucp_pm_search.php which overly copies from \includes\ucp\ucp_pm_viewfolder.php to display search results and also partly from \search.php to accept and process requests
• \styles\prosilver\template\ucp_pm_search_body.html mainly copies \styles\prosilver\template\search_body.html but also makes it module-compatible
• \styles\prosilver\template\ucp_pm_search_results.html which is largely a copy of \styles\prosilver\template\ucp_pm_viewfolder.html but also displays the folder for each PM and all participants.

It was a fairly straight process, provided you know all existing files almost inside out. PM actions (mark or move) only operate folder-wise by default and displaying multiple folders at once was never planned for phpBB - this required even more code copies, but in the end works as intended (so you're able to first search PMs and then no matter which folders the results reside in you can now move them all at once). Only deleting PMs in that view isn't possible, as it required too many too creepy hacks (the workaround is easy: just move all PMs to a folder, then view that folder to delete any/all of them).

As you can see in the screenshots everything is familiar: both the search options (as in the board search) and the results (as in a PM folder). One of the search results (folder "Inbox 2011") is blacked out on every participant because the recipient is a group name, not my username. Also note that the vertical tabs on the left side which represent the PM folders are highlighted when at least one search result is from there.

I have no PR for it since the code is not available. And keep in mind it was written 6+ years ago for 3.0, so I have my doubts you'd really be interested in it.

[P_I]

For what it is worth https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2263011. Agreed this should be core phpBB functionality and since the extension was abandoned, perhaps the phpBB development team would consider making it part of phpBB 4

The repository for the above mentioned Extension is https://github.com/satanasov/pmsearch.

I've periodically tested it on my localhost testbed and haven't had any issues.