SearchFilter modifiers#

The filter and exclude operations specify exact matches by default. However, when filtering DataLists, there are a number of suffixes that you can put on field names to change this behavior. These are represented as SearchFilter subclasses and include.

An example of a SearchFilter in use:

php
// fetch any player that starts with a S
$players = Player::get()->filter([
    'FirstName:StartsWith' => 'S',
    'PlayerNumber:GreaterThan' => '10',
]);

// to fetch any player that's name contains the letter 'z'
$players = Player::get()->filterAny([
    'FirstName:PartialMatch' => 'z',
    'LastName:PartialMatch' => 'z',
]);

Developers can define their own SearchFilter if needing to extend the ORM filter and exclude behaviors.

These suffixes can also take modifiers themselves. The modifiers currently supported are ":not", ":nocase" and ":case". These negate the filter, make it case-insensitive and make it case-sensitive, respectively. The default comparison uses the database's default. For MySQL and MSSQL, this is case-insensitive. For PostgreSQL, this is case-sensitive.

php
// Fetch players that their FirstName is 'Sam'
// Caution: This might be case in-sensitive if MySQL or MSSQL is used
$players = Player::get()->filter([
    'FirstName:ExactMatch' => 'Sam',
]);

// Fetch players that their FirstName is 'Sam' (force case-sensitive)
$players = Player::get()->filter([
    'FirstName:ExactMatch:case' => 'Sam',
]);

// Fetch players that their FirstName is 'Sam' (force NOT case-sensitive)
$players = Player::get()->filter([
    'FirstName:ExactMatch:nocase' => 'Sam',
]);

By default the :ExactMatch filter is applied, hence why we can shorthand the above to:

php
// Default DB engine behaviour
$players = Player::get()->filter('FirstName', 'Sam');
// case-sensitive
$players = Player::get()->filter('FirstName:case', 'Sam');
// NOT case-sensitive
$players = Player::get()->filter('FirstName:nocase', 'Sam');

Note that all search filters (e.g. :PartialMatch) refer to services registered with Injector within the DataListFilter. prefixed namespace. New filters can be registered using the below yml config:

yaml
SilverStripe\Core\Injector\Injector:
  DataListFilter.CustomMatch:
    class: MyVendor\Search\CustomMatchFilter

The following is a query which will return everyone whose first name starts with "S", either lowercase or uppercase:

php
$players = Player::get()->filter([
    'FirstName:StartsWith:nocase' => 'S',
]);

// use :not to perform a converse operation to filter anything but a 'W'
$players = Player::get()->filter([
    'FirstName:StartsWith:not' => 'W',
]);

API documentation#