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titleCLOUD
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Filters / Conditions


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Filters is a very important concept in ConfiForms and is used in many places, basically it is the core of ConfiForms, a base which helps to connect ConfiForms forms and allows to query data stored within ConfiForms form:

  • to limit number of records returned by "*views" macros (TableView, ListView, CardView, CalendarView and ValueView)
  • to fire IFTTT actions based on conditions (ConfiForms IFTTT macro)
  • to execute rules based on a condition (ConfiForms Field Definition Rules)
  • to define custom CSS rules for your views, conditionally
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See also Accessing field values and properties. You can use complex properties in your filters. For example filtering dropdown fields by values and by labels, filtering page type fields by page metadata fields, filtering user fields by, for example - email property

Filter expressions can be used with Virtual functions

Info

See ConfiForms Filters by example to learn by example


ConfiForms plugin uses 'Lucene like' syntax for expressions, supports grouping using parenthesis and AND/OR logical operators. Nesting expressions is possible

Supports filtering for expressions that start with a wild-card. Supports filtering per field as well as free text search (filter to match against any field value).

Operators AND and OR are case-sensitive! (as everything else in ConfiForms: field names, form names, virtual functions)

Supports not notation, to filter records that do not match the given filter: '!' is used for that. Example: !f1:[empty] - will look for records where f1 field value is not empty (has some value)

Supports simple math operations and comparisons on dates (to add or substract days from today's date). See examples below 

Valid example: (f1:*success AND f2:>[yesterday]) OR (f3:accepted) - matches records with field values having 'success' and where f2 field value is after yesterday or where f3 filed value is equals to 'accepted'

Valid example: (f1:*success AND f2:>[today]-1) OR (!f3:[empty]) - matches records with field values having 'success' and where f2 field value is after yesterday or where f3 field value is not empty

Through "evaluateFormula" from Virtual functions you have access to Supported math operators, formulas and functions


Main principle is you match current record's field's value with a given value

Code Block
fieldname:value

where fieldname itself could be an expression and value could be a reference to field values via [entry.field_name] notation

Code Block
fieldname.trunc(3):[entry.anotherfield.trunc(3)]

Important to follow the concept of a field name followed by a value to check against separated with :


To match values against regular expressions please consider using "matches" function from Virtual functions

Code Block
myfield.matches(^[a-zA-Z0-9]*$):true


Reserved words to use in expressions:

*To match all
val*Will match the record(s) where the field value starts with "val"
*valWill match the record(s) where the field value ends with "val"
*val*Will match the record(s) where the field value has "val" anywhere 
fieldname:val*

Will only check the "fieldname" field for the value "val" in the beginning of each word in the value


[empty]To match empty values for particular field. Example: field1:[empty] - will match records where field1 is empty (does not have a value, but the form defines this field)
[now]Current time and date, useful with '<' and '>' for comparing with dates stored. Example: someDateField:<[now] - will match records where field 'someDateField' has value which is in the past compared to now (current time)
[today]Same as [now], but without time
[tomorrow]To compare against tomorrow's date. Also something like [today]+1 could be used instead
[yesterday]To compare against yesterday's date. Also something like [today]-1 could be used instead
[dateyyyyMMdd]To compare against given date in the format: yyyyMMdd, example: [date20150130] to give a date as Jan 30 2015
[datetimeyyyyMMdd HH:mm]To compare against given date with time in the format: yyyyMMdd HH:mm, example: [date20151231 12:13] to give a date as Dec 31 2015 12:13
[date timetoday hh:mm]You can use a shortcut to "today" with given construction
'<' and '>' (and '<=' and '>=')Can be used together with date and datetime fields, as well as to compare values for numeric fields stored
!To reverse the filter condition. Example: !field1:[empty] - will find records that have 'field1' field filled
:this

In *views macros you can reference current user and current page as "this" (when used to filter user (and multiuser) and page (and autopage) field types respectfully),

Example:

  • thepage:this
  • createdBy:this

(thepage is the field of type Page and createdBy is a metadata field to hold created by info for given record). See more about metadata field and available field types in Documentation


Warning

From version 1.35 we start to deprecate support for ":this" in filters, as filters are now "context aware" and you can use

  • _user
  • _today
  • _page

as any other ConfiForms field to get, current user (User object), date (DateHolder) and page (Page object) where the filter is executed

These "context fields" work with Virtual functions

Code Block
--- format current date to day of week
_today.formatDate(u)
 
--- get current page ID
_page.id
 
--- some weird transformation example to get the page title and split it by spaces then join by a single quote
_page.displayTitle.split( ).asArray(')
 
--- get current user's location (through profile)
_user.asUserProfile.location

Also, there is a "_count" field which holds the number of record in the current scope (might change in time while conditions get processed by a filter engine)

That said, consider the following example:

  • You have 5 records initially and the filter looks like

    Code Block
    _count:>4

    will match all

  • While the filter like this

    Code Block
    somefield:hello AND _count:>4

    will first try to find the matches for "hello" and then apply the other condition (and depending on matches on left-hand side of the query the count might be less than 4)

Warning

If you want to use the values of context field in your filters then you will need to use it through the [entry.fieldname] reference

Something like:

ownedBy:[entry._user]

mypage:[entry._page.id]




hasChanged(fieldName)

Status
colourGreen
titlefrom v. 1.36

See explanation in Virtual functions

Warning

This function is supported only when filter is used in condition field in IFTTT macro, as only in this case there is an information about the previous state of the record present in the context

_previousState.fieldname

See hasChanged function in Virtual functions

Warning

This function is supported only when filter is used in condition field in IFTTT macro, as only in this case there is an information about the previous state of the record present in the context

You can access ANY property of the ConfiForms record that was there before the update. But ONLY in the IFTTT conditions

Supports for "records count" evaluation

Status
colourGreen
titlefrom v. 1.52.6

For example, this filter will check that the user can register not more than 2 records within 14 days

Code Block
(createdBy:[entry._user] AND created:>([today]-14)):>2

So, the filter shall start with a parenthesis and end with a parenthesis followed by semicolon and expression

Code Block
>
<
>=
<=
or just a number (to match exactly)

This works in Field Definition Rules and allows you to have validation rules as dynamic as this

Calculations on date/datetime and timestamp fields

When you want to apply filters on date/datetime or timestamp fields you actually work on their "timestamp values" - https://www.unixtimestamp.com/index.php

And that is in milliseconds. So, when you want to add/subtract days or hours or minutes from some timestamp holding field you need to operate in milliseconds

For example when you want to check the interval is longer than 60 days (duration is a DateTime interval field in this example)

Code Block
duration.startDate:>([entry.duration.endDate]-5184000000)

How we got a "5184000000" value? This is 60 days in milliseconds

How to convert a day into milliseconds: https://www.unitjuggler.com/convert-time-from-day-to-ms.html

Some examples:

  • field1:[today]-5 - assuming field1 is of type date (or datetime) this filter will return records where field1 value is not older than 5 days from now
  • field1:[today]+10 - assuming field1 is of type date (or datetime) this filter will return records where field1 value is not after 10 days from now

...