Bug 429648

Summary: documentation for baloosearch unhelpful, is the search really that broad
Product: [Frameworks and Libraries] frameworks-baloo Reporter: John Bray <johnbray822>
Component: generalAssignee: baloo-bugs-null
Status: RESOLVED FIXED    
Severity: normal CC: tagwerk19
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: 5.68.0   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Other   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description John Bray 2020-11-25 15:35:36 UTC
baloosearch --help provides very limited documentation. I have a file where balooshow Example.jpg has line

                Description: EXIF Image Description

So I thought I'd be able to do a baloosearch against that metadata field. But its completely unclear what baloosearch is searching against. The huge number of results suggests its doing a free search of the contents of every file, which is of little use.

I expected syntax like

baloosearch -t Description EXIF

to returns a files with that metadata

but its opaque what the -t field does

Baloo 5.68.0
Mint 20
Comment 1 tagwerk19 2021-06-11 18:47:45 UTC
I think, for a single word, you can search with
    baloosearch Description:EXIF

If you want to search for a phrase containing the words
    baloosearch Description:\"EXIF Image Description\"

If you want to search for the exact phrase, I've found that
    baloosearch Description:EXIF_Image_Description
works.

There's more info under
    https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=432004#c1
Comment 2 tagwerk19 2021-07-09 11:56:54 UTC
One more thing worth montioning, if you do a
    balooshow -x filename
you will get a list of the metadata tags and values "read from" that file and you can use Baloosearch can search for these tags/values

I'll close this now but feel free to reopen if you've more questions.