The key to accessing the alternate search syntax is to add &syntax=cloudsearch to the end of your search URL. You will need to modify the search query in the URL bar only, because searching from within the webpage will end up removing the &syntax=cloudsearch parameter.
It's more convenient to use this page to enter your query.
| word prefix | 'jailb*' |
| phrase | '"why you no"' |
| number range | 1000..2000 |
| open-ended number range | 40000.. |
| boolean operators | (and 'jailb*' (not 'jailbait')) |
If you get the error
that means there's a syntax error in your query. Although it still displays search results, it has dropped back to the Lucene search syntax, and really isn't doing what you want.
| field | description | example |
|---|---|---|
| text: | multiple fields — title + author + subreddit + selftext
(this is the field used when you do a basic search) | text:'shitty_watercolour' |
| title: | thread title | title:'egg' |
| selftext: | body of a self-text thread | selftext:'cheese' |
| author: | author's name | author:'NY1227' |
| site: | website | site:'youtube.com' |
| url: | url:'twitter.com/wojyahoonba' | |
| flair: | multiple fields — flair_text + flair_css_class | |
| flair_text: | flair attached to the story | flair_text:'dry' |
| flair_css_class: | CSS class associated with the flair | (and subreddit:'gametales' flair_css_class:'table') |
| subreddit: | subreddit it was posted in | (or subreddit:'pics' subreddit:'aww') |
| timestamp: | Unix time the thread was created | timestamp:1356998400..1357084799 |
| num_comments: | number of comments (note: may give results with fewer comments when comments have been deleted) | num_comments:40000.. |
| nsfw:
over18: | is the thread marked NSFW? (0=SFW, 1=NSFW) | (and title:'fruit' nsfw:1) |
| self:
is_self: | is the thread a self-thread? (0=link, 1=self post) | (and subreddit:'aww' is_self:1) |
| top: | total score | |
| downs: | number of downvotes | downs:4000.. |
| ups: | number of upvotes | ups:13000.. |
| sr_id: | base36 decoded version of the subreddit ID | sr_id:4606680 (4606680 = "t5_2qqjc" = /r/todayilearned) |
| fullname: | the fullname of the thread (should begin with "t3_") | fullname:'t3_19990k' |
In fact, this is how things like multireddit searches and searches over "this week" are done — a subreddit: or timestamp: field is added onto the user's query.
| field | description | example |
|---|---|---|
| text: | multiple fields — name + title + description
(this is the field used when you do a basic search) | |
| language: | find subreddits for a specific language
(although it seems to be woefully incomplete) | de, es |
| name: | No idea. How is this different from description: ? | [1] |
| description: | No idea. | [1] |
| sidebar: | Very rarely but sometimes matches. Maybe this was disabled at some point, but it still has some stale data in the index? | [1] |
| header_title: | This one seems to never match. | [1] |
| activity: | ? | |
| link_type: | ? | |
| subscribers: | ? | |
| title: | ? | |
| type: | ? | |
| nsfw: over18: | ? |
The public-facing syntax currently in use is actually parsed by the Whoosh library (which uses a search syntax that's "very similar to Lucene"), and then the L2CS library takes the output from the Whoosh parser and builds a CloudSearch query.
Note that there's a serious bug in the syntax-converter library.
One benefit is that it allows you to search comments.