Searching by Regular Expression

[mulharinf]

Is there a guide to explain how to Search "Matching Regular Expressions"  I would like to be able to Search photos by the Date the photo was taken, not added to the gallery

[Αndré]

The regular expression search won't help you in that case, as that information is stored in the EXIF data, which isn't included in the search if I remember correctly. There's an option to read EXIF data in the Coppermine configuration. Unfortunately, Coppermine just reads that information (and stores it in the database) after a picture has been viewed at least once. If all information has been read, you still need to modify the search to use the EXIF data.

[mulharinf]

Thanks,  is there a guid for using regular expressions in searches?  Not very familiar with it, and would like to know more about the functionality

[Αndré]

Honestly, I never used that functionality of the Coppermine search, but I'd expect that you can use any regular expression tutorial to learn how it works.

[phill104]

Maybe for 1.6 we should include EXIF data in the searches.

[gmc]

It is a bit deceiving to include EXIF data in search - as that data only exists if the picture has been viewed since the option was set to read the data... And at least one CPG release truncated the table (was ok as it would just repopulate as pics were viewed - and nothing depended on the data being there...)

If it is going to be included in search - then we have to consider populating the data at upload - and the implications that may have...
Or maybe an admin utility to do so - if the user wants the data there to search.

I just wouldn't want to give the impression we are searching all EXIF data if we can't be sure that we are...

[phill104]

I too was thinking similar. We have radio buttons so users can select what fields they are searching so it would be easy to have the EXIF one greyed out. But how does a user then know which images actually have EXIF data and that the data has been read? I can see a lot of frustration where users are not getting the results they expect.

[Αndré]

Currently, if the image gets resized by GD, any meta data is lost. If I remember correctly this doesn't happen when using ImageMagick. However, as we intend to write meta data back to the image (thread, toolkit), this shouldn't be an issue in the future even when using GD. Of course this won't restore the meta data of already existing files.