ArtFuzzySearch

Easy, fast, fuzzy text search.

The primary use-case for ArtFuzzySearch is to quickly filter a list of items as you type, and to do it in flexible way so you catch odd spellings and type-os and other inconsistencies. The key to success is speed and, together with a good UX, interactively showing the results as the user types and edits their search string.

It works similar to VSCode and SublimeText's file-search. The order of the letters matter, but there can be missing letters or skipped letters.

Example

let {fuzzySearch} = require("@art-suite/art-fuzzy-search");

let result = fuzzySearch(
  "fz",       // search text
  [
    ["I love food"],
    "fz - just a string is OK too",
    ["I find pizza appealing", 123, true],
    ["I fuzzbuzz", "any extra data", "is returned unchanged"]
  ]
)

/*
result: [
  "fz - just a string is OK too",
  ["I fuzzbuzz", "any extra data", "is returned unchanged"],
  ["I find pizza appealing", 123, true]
];
*/

API

let {fuzzySearch} = require("@art-suite/art-fuzzy-search");

fuzzySearch(searchString, searchData) => filteredAndSortedSearchData

• IN: (searchString, searchData)

  • searchString: an String to search for
  • searchData: [searchDataRecord, ...] (an Array of searchDataRecords)

• OUT: searchData, filtered and sorted by best-matches

• searchDataRecord: [searchInString, arbitraryData...]

  • searchDataRecords are themselves an array
  • only the first element is used by fuzzySearch
  • searchInString: arbitrary String which is tested to see if it matches the provided searchString; the quality of the match is also considered and used for the final sort of the returned searchData
  • arbitraryData: if searchInString matches, the entire searchDataRecord will be returned, untouched - including any arbitrary data included after searchInString. Use these additional slots to pass through any additional data you need. e.g. a JSON object of the record or just the record's ID.

Note that fuzzySearch is very forgiving. The only requirement for a match is that the characters of the searchString exist in the searchInString (case insensitively), in the same order, but possibly with any number of characters in between:

Example: If searchString == 'dog', then the string "I did a lot of great work." will match: "I Did a lOt of Great work."

The key is the results will be sorted based on the quality of the match - best match first. The main sorting criterias is the length of the match. Sorter matches are preferred. For more details, see the Algorithm Notes below.

Algorithm Notes

Basic algorithm:

1. Filter out all search-texts that don't match:
   • all letters from the search string must be present and in the same order in the search text
   • However, they don't have to match case and they can optionally match search-text with extra characters in between. e.g. "fz" will match "Fun zoo" since "f" and "z" are in order even though "un " is in between.
2. Sort the results by result-quality which is determined by
   • length of match; shorter is preferred
   • case sensitive matches are preferred
   • matches closer to the beginning of the search-text are preferred