In Swivle it is easy to enter a search term to filter out some of your files. However, this might be too limiting for you. For more fine-tuned searching and filtering, queries can be used.

The queries in Swivle are based on the Lucene query syntax. The basic query format is identical, but Swivle adds additional functionality in some places. For example with date range queries, Swivle can parse various input formats and allow dynamic queries and date/time arithmetic.

Below are some examples of typical search queries.

When you search for one or more words without specifying any specific fields, Swivle will return all assets that match that word in any useful field, typically with the most relevant matches on top. This will look in:

The following will search for the word "coffee" in any text or metadata:

You can search for content in a folder. There are 2 ways to do that, one including content in any subfolders and one matching only content directly in the folder. Always make sure you wrap the path with double-quotes.

Including content in any subfolders of Images:

Only content directly in the Images folder:

Match everything in the collection with id 9F1AQwbaKFQB3IPFQuSeSQ:

In some cases, for example when using the API, it might be useful to search for a specific asset by its unique identifier:

An Swivle query is broken up into terms and operators. There are 2 types of terms:

Multiple terms can be combined together with Boolean operators to form a more complex query.

Searching on fields is possible by specifying the technical Swivle metadata field name followed by a colon, followed by the value to search for.

Query on assets where the value of the Usage Rights field is "Rights managed":

Query on assets where the value of the Status field is "Production":

A query may contain multiple fields or sub queries. These subqueries can be combined with logical operators.

Note: Operators must be ALL CAPS.

The AND operator finds assets where both query terms match the metadata. The symbol && can also be used instead of the word AND.

Query on assets where Usage Rights is "Rights managed" and Status is "Production":

Note: If you do not specify an operator when combining multiple queries, Swivle will use an AND operator by default.

The OR operator links two queries to find matching assets if either of the terms exist in the metadata. The symbol || can also be used instead of the word OR.

Query on assets where Status is "new" OR Status is "Draft":

The + or "must" operator, requires that the term after the + symbol exist somewhere in a the field of an asset.

Query on assets where Status is "Production":

Query on assets where Usage Rights is "Rights managed" and Status is "Production":

Caveat: when using a + in the url of API queries, make sure it is encoded as %2B, otherwise it will likely be interpreted as a 'space'.

The NOT operator excludes assets that contain the term after NOT. The symbol ! can be used instead of the word NOT.

Query on assets where Usage Rights is "Rights managed" and Status is not "Production":

The - or prohibit operator excludes assets that contain the term after the - symbol.

Query on assets where Status is not "Production" (note that we have to prefix this with an 'all' search *:*, it cannot subtract hits from nothing):

Query on assets where Usage Rights is "Rights managed" and Status is not "Production":

Range queries are queries to find assets whose field values are between the lower and upper bound specified by the range query.

Range queries can be inclusive or exclusive of the upper and lower bounds. Inclusive_ range queries_ are denoted by square brackets "[ ]". Exclusive range queries are denoted by curly brackets { }.

Query on assets where Resolution X (dpi) is between 100 and 300 (inclusive):

Query on assets where the License start date is May 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th in the year 2010 (inclusive). Note that you should specify a time when searching in datetime fields. If you would only specify the date, the upper bound time would default to 00:00:00, which would not return any results for that day.

Query on assets where the License start date is May 2nd or 3rd in the year 2010 (exclusive):

A range query may also contain ANY lower or upper bound value, this can be specified by a *.

Query on assets where the License start date is up to May 2nd 2010:

Query on assets where the License start date is after May 2nd 2010:

Range queries are particularly useful on date and number fields but can also be used on text fields. The following finds all documents whose titles are between aida and carmen:

The search engine supports using parentheses to group clauses to form sub queries. This can be very useful if you want to control the boolean logic for a query.

Query on assets where Status is "New" or "Draft" and Usage Rights is "Rights managed".

The search engine supports using parentheses to group multiple clauses to a single field.

Query on assets where Description contains "Reuters", "free" and "use".

You can use "*" and "?" wildcards in queries if you do not know the exact word you are searching for. You cannot use wildcards within "phrase queries".

The following will match both "test" and "text".

The following will search all terms starting with "test".

Note: Wildcard queries are much slower than normal queries, so only use them if you really need to. Do not use a wildcard at the start of a word; such queries are even slower. If you want to find all files with a specific extension, do not use filename:*.jpg, but instead use extension:jpg. If you need to find all assets below a folder, do not use folderPath:/Demo Zone* but instead use ancestorPaths:"/Demo Zone" 

Lucene supports fuzzy searches based on the Levenshtein Distance, or edit distance algorithm. To do a fuzzy search, use the tilde, ~, symbol at the end of a 'single word term'. For example to search for a term similar in spelling to "roam" use the fuzzy search:

This search will find terms like foam and roams.

You can even influence the required similarity. The value is between 0 and 1, with a value closer to 1 only terms with a higher similarity will be matched. For example:

The default that is used if the parameter is not given is 0.5.

In some cases you may want to restrict your search to only include assets that have a value entered in a certain field, for example the copyright field. This can be done with a special variation of the wildcard query:

Or for example, find all assets that have a status entered:

Note: Beware on which fields you use these queries. It is slower on fields with lots of unique values. So a 'status' field is ok, but a 'filename' field could be very slow.

Another special query is the 'match all assets' query. This query will find all assets (of course still filtered to only return assets that you have view permission for).

Swivle also interprets an 'empty' query as a 'match all assets' query.

The usefulness of the 'match all assets' query is limited. One specific case is to search assets that do not have a specific field value. For example:

In Lucene, the "-" or NOT operators can only 'filter' assets that are matched by another part of the query. Since there is no 'other part' of the query we can simulate one by using a 'match all assets' query. The following will return all assets that do not have status "Final".

Another case where this is useful is when searching for assets that do not have a value entered for a specific field. Lucene can not find these assets because it cannot search for a field that has no value. By using a 'match all assets' query and subtracting all assets that DO have a value for the field it is possible to get the desired result:

Query on assets where the License start date is pattern is yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ:

Date values are not restricted to static values. There are several cases where you need the current date in a query instead of a static date. "now" represents the current date (and time).

Query on assets where the License is still valid (current date between license start and end date):

Date or datetime queries can use several different patterns to specify their date and time. The following list shows the date patterns supported by Swivle. The first pattern that is recognized will be used to parse the date.

Date and Time Pattern                       Result 1

yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ                  2010-07-04T12:08:56-0700
yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss                    2010-07-04T12:08:56
yyyy:MM:dd                                         2010:07:04
yyyy-MM-dd                                        2010-07-04
yyyy/MM/dd                                        2010/07/04
HH:mm:ss                                            12:08:56
GMT_Milliseconds                              1278245336
yyyyMMdd                                          20100704 

Date math can be used to do date calculations before the date is used by the query. Supported operations are: rounding (/), adding (+) and subtracting (-) date parts.

The following examples show how the several date math operations can be used and combined.

Date math expression                      Result
/h                                              Round to the start of the current hour.
/d                                                  Round to the start of the current day.
now+2Y                                           Exactly two years in the future from now.
now-1d                                               Exactly 1 day prior to now.
now+6M/d         6 months and 3 days in the future from the start of the current day.
now+6M+3d/d               6 months and 3 days in the future from now rounded down to nearest day.

The list below shows the available units for math operations.

​Unit                                           In Query
Years                                                 Y
Months                                               M

Weeks w
Days                                                   d
Hours                                                 H, h
Minutes                                             m
Seconds                                             s

Query on assets where the License start date is exactly today (between 00:00:00 and 23:59:59):

The search engine uses special characters as part of the query syntax:

To use these special characters as values in queries, escape them by placing a \ before the character. For example to search for John&Doe in the copyright field, use the query:

When you create permission rules in the Swivle Management console you can use queries to give permissions if metadata meets specific criteria. Although these queries use the same syntax as normal Swivle queries, not all query types can be used in these rules.

Exact term queries

Phrase queries

Range queries (only on numeric and date fields)

Boolean queries

Managing licensed files
The following query will allow you to automatically filter out assets that have a licenseEndDate in the past. This means it will still show assets without a licenseEndDate or with a date in the future.