Searching - What to Search For

FieldNamedata=value

Obviously you must tell WebCatalog what data to search for, otherwise it won't know what to find! You tell WebCatalog what field to look in, and the text to look for (we call it data) by typing the name of the field followed by the word "data" in a URL (or embedded [Search] context).

If your database has a field called "FirstName", and you want to look for records that have "Grant" in the FirstName field, then you would enter a URL something like this:

http://Results.tpl?command=search&eqFirstNamedata=Grant&db=SomeDatabase.db

The template "Results.tpl" will be displayed after the search, and any [FoundItems] contexts in it will be filled with found records. "eq" stands for "equals", meaning that the FirstName field must equal "Grant" exactly, otherwise it won't be considered a match. "eq" is one of many different ways to compare data in your database -- see Comparisons for a complete list of all the different ways to compare fields.

Note: If visitors leave a field blank in a search form, WebCatalog assumes they do not "care" to search that field -- it acts as though you had not even specified the field in the search criteria at all. If you want to search for blanks (no text in the field whatsoever, not even a space), you can override this behavior by searching for "[blank]", as in eqTitledata=[blank].