I understand how to search for a film by year released. If you want to see a list of all your films released in 1955 for instance you simply search for "1955". But is it possible to search for all your films over a range of years? For instance, is there a way to search for all my films from 1955-1965. I can't seem to find out how to do this. If it isn't possible it should be very easy to implement using some sort of Boolean filter. I have tried entering in the search bar "1955 or 1956 or 1957 ..." etc. But this is pretty cumbersome. It also finds entries that aren't in the range - usually because the years in the search query are somehow mentioned in the summary field or comment field in the offending film entry. For example, a search for "1954" brings up the 2008 Jim Carrey film "Horton Hear's a Who" because 1954 is mentioned in the film's summary field.
Being able to search for a group of films over a range of years is very useful. It is one of my favourite features of the XBMC software that I have used in the past as a movie-viewer and basic film cataloging tool.
How to search for a film over a "range" of years
-
BarnabyRudge
- Contributor
- Posts: 6
- Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2015 8:26 pm
Re: How to search for a film over a "range" of years
Thank you for the feedback about improving the search filter to be smart and recognize a date range as a search. It actually looking for a date and doing the correct thing for any 4 digit number and searching the entire year, but never occurred to us to add the range. Since it's already doing a single year consider searching for "1955-1965" done; beta version with the improvement.
Another way to achieve this or more complex date searches would have been to use a smart collection to achieve a date range result. The rule set would have been: "Theatrical is after 31st Dec 1954 and theatrical is before 1 January, 1966".
Another way to achieve this or more complex date searches would have been to use a smart collection to achieve a date range result. The rule set would have been: "Theatrical is after 31st Dec 1954 and theatrical is before 1 January, 1966".
-
BarnabyRudge
- Contributor
- Posts: 6
- Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2015 8:26 pm
Re: How to search for a film over a "range" of years
Wow, that is a cool way to use the Smart Folders! I have to admit I've never really used them before.
I've just been setting up different Smart Folders for fun - throwing various conditions at them to see what I can do and I noticed what I think might be a bug (or a quirk).
I've been using a bunch of different qualifiers -- "theatrical", "starring", "director" and a couple of others. However, whenever I use the "genre" qualifier I receive zero entries in my Smart Folder even if there are obvious matches in the library. I tried it a bunch of ways and continued to get zero entries despite the conditions being met. And then I realized what the problem was. When I entered the genre that I was searching for I had entered "Horror " (with and extra space) instead of "Horror". With the extra space nothing showed up. Without the extra space all was good and the Smart Folder contained all the expected entries.
I've just been setting up different Smart Folders for fun - throwing various conditions at them to see what I can do and I noticed what I think might be a bug (or a quirk).
I've been using a bunch of different qualifiers -- "theatrical", "starring", "director" and a couple of others. However, whenever I use the "genre" qualifier I receive zero entries in my Smart Folder even if there are obvious matches in the library. I tried it a bunch of ways and continued to get zero entries despite the conditions being met. And then I realized what the problem was. When I entered the genre that I was searching for I had entered "Horror " (with and extra space) instead of "Horror". With the extra space nothing showed up. Without the extra space all was good and the Smart Folder contained all the expected entries.
Re: How to search for a film over a "range" of years
I've been meaning to enter a self cleanup into text entries, like cleaning up extra spaces at the end or not allowing new lines in fields that are only one line. But I know that there are edge cases and users who are actually taking advantage of being able to enter anything to a text field so I been holding off as it's not that essential that the text field be that smart.
I should likely build it into a command, like the title case plugin (which will go through and remove trailing spaces as well as case the title properly) that goes through and does these fixes.
For the smart collection, changing the rule on genre to be "contains" should fix the space issue, as then it's matching part of the text instead of the entire text as "is" tries to do and the space means the text is actually different.
No mention on the speed of feature development on the date range search.
I actually believe it's a record here at Bruji, 20 minutes from feedback to deployment of a new feature, we have fixe bugs faster, but never a new feature. 
I should likely build it into a command, like the title case plugin (which will go through and remove trailing spaces as well as case the title properly) that goes through and does these fixes.
For the smart collection, changing the rule on genre to be "contains" should fix the space issue, as then it's matching part of the text instead of the entire text as "is" tries to do and the space means the text is actually different.
No mention on the speed of feature development on the date range search.
I actually believe it's a record here at Bruji, 20 minutes from feedback to deployment of a new feature, we have fixe bugs faster, but never a new feature.