Query Syntax
Overview
The query syntax for DeepSearch is similar to the syntax of search engines, where a user can additionally specify how to interpret the query (or part of it) by providing “prefixes”.
A query consists of a single line of text for which DeepSearch returns a number of results. The score for each asset is computed as a combination of name, tag matches, and similarity to the input query in the AI embedding space. Here are some search examples:
Query: white car

Query: watermelon

Query filtering
As described in the previous section DeepSearch takes into account tag and name matches, when scoring the indexed assets. You can augment the queries with additional filters to narrow down the search to a specific type of asset (e.g., ones created after a certain date or by a specific user, etc.). To achieve this, additional information in the query string must be in one of the following forms:
prefix:<one word>
prefix:”<multiple words>”
In this example, the prefix is a single identifier without spaces, representing the filter type (e.g., “tag”, “name”, “created_by”, “modified_after”, etc. Refer to the Available Prefixes section below for a complete list of supported prefixes).
Single query may contain multiple entries with prefixes in which case the effect of each individual filter (i.e. prefixed entry) will be combined. For example:
“formula 1 car” ext:”usd” created_by:”my-user@my-company.com”
This will filter assets that have USD extension and are created by my-user@my-company.com
user and then sort these results by positioning formula one cars first (text query).
The effect of prefixes can also be reversed, by adding a “-” in front of them, for example:
“formula 1 car” -name:”benetton”
This will sort the result by positioning the formula one cars first (text query), but remove those that have “benetton” in their name.
OR Syntax
As explained in the previous section, you can use prefixes to filter query results. If you want to filter results based on any of the conditions for a given prefix (OR
behavior), separate the conditions of that prefix with commas. For example, the following query selects the files with extension usd
or jpg
and sorts them by similarity with the concept of basket
:
basket ext:usd,jpg
Note
Don’t use spaces around the comma. Otherwise, you will split the query.
When you search for substrings containing spaces or commas, the search expression needs to be enclosed in double quotes:
name:"name, with comma",test
This query matches assets that have either “name, with comma” or “test” (or both) in their name.
Warning
There is no way to OR
filters with different prefixes, only conditions for the same prefix.
Wildcards
Below are examples of how Wildcards can be used in searches.
Supported Wildcards
Wildcard |
Description |
Example |
---|---|---|
|
Matches any number of any characters |
|
|
Matches any single character |
|
Note
You can use multiple wildcards in a single, prefixed query. For example, name:c?a*r
may find “chair” and “character” assets.
Supported Prefixes
Prefix |
Example |
---|---|
name |
|
ext |
|
path |
|
The default query also supports wildcards, but only to match asset names. For example, car
matches assets based on a combination of their name, AI, and tag. car*
matches assets that have car*
in their name (equivalent to name:car*
).
Available Prefixes
Prefix |
Description |
---|---|
image |
Image-based similarity search |
description |
AI-driven text-based search |
name |
Filters search results by the asset file name (partial matching is supported) |
ext |
Filters search results by the asset file extension (e.g., |
path |
Filters search results by the full path (e.g., |
tag |
Filters search results by a specific tag (e.g., |
created_after |
Filters search results that are newer than a specific date (e.g., |
created_before |
Filters search results that are older than a specific date (e.g,. |
modified_after |
Filters search results that are modified after a specific date (e.g., |
modified_before |
Filters search results that are modified before a specific date (e.g., |
larger_than |
Filters search results that are larger than a given size (e.g., |
smaller_than |
Filters search results that are smaller than a given size (e.g., |
created_by |
Filters search results that are created by a provided user (e.g., |
modified_by |
Filters search results that are modified by a provided user (e.g., |
max |
Limits the number of results returned from the search service (default: |