Support $search

This is a proposed special attribute that allows you to fuzzy match a property. Possibly even multiple properties and/or nested documents.

Suggested syntax:

name: {
  $search: ['alice', 'Alice', 'bo', /$bob/i]
}

Following similar syntax to our other special query filters, this would allow you to filter by a singular value, multiple values (treated like an or) and/or regular expressions directly.

For knex we’d have to manually construct OR queries so it would get a little messy because in order to do LIKE queries the syntax is:

knex('users').where('name', 'like', '%Test%');

[DaddyWarbucks]

Here are a couple examples of how I typically handle this in both Sequelize and Mongo/Mongoose

Sequelize

export const withSearch = (searchProps, idProps) => (context) => {
  if (!context.params.query) {
    return context;
  }

  const { $search, ...query } = context.params.query;

  if (!$search) {
    context.params.query = query;
    return context;
  }

  const $or = [];

  searchProps.forEach((prop) => {
    $or.push({ [prop]: { $iLike: `%${$search}%` } });
  });

  if (idProps && isValidInteger($search)) {
    idProps.forEach((prop) => {
      $or.push({ [prop]: $search });
    });
  }

  context.params.query = {
    ...query,
    $or: [...(query.$or || []), ...$or]
  };

  return context;
};

Mongo/Mongoose

const traverse = require('traverse');

// https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3446170/escape-string-for-use-in-javascript-regex
const escapeRegExp = (string) => {
  return string.replace(/[.*+?^${}()|[\]\\]/g, '\\$&');
};

module.exports.searchRegex = (stringProps, numberProps) => (context) => {
  if (!context.params.query) {
    return context;
  }

  // TODO: Deepclone? Or is traverse immutable?
  const query = { ...context.params.query };
  const $search = query.$search;
  delete query.$search;

  // Find and replace any `$search` properties, even when
  // nested in query or query arrays
  traverse(query).forEach(function (value) {
    if (this.parent && this.parent.node.$search !== undefined) {
      this.parent.node.$regex = new RegExp(escapeRegExp(value), 'i');
      delete this.parent.node.$search;
    }
  });

  if ($search && stringProps) {
    query.$or = query.$or || [];
    stringProps.forEach((prop) => {
      query.$or.push({
        [prop]: { $regex: new RegExp(escapeRegExp($search), 'i') }
      });
    });
  }

  if ($search && !isNaN(Number($search)) && numberProps) {
    query.$or = query.$or || [];
    numberProps.forEach((prop) => {
      query.$or.push({
        [prop]: Number($search)
      });
    });
  }

  context.params.query = query;

  return context;
};

[strarsis]

@DaddyWarbucks: Thanks again! I made a hook for KnexJS FeathersJS adapter (q to like query): https://github.com/josx/ra-data-feathers/issues/175#issuecomment-1065925854