Request Advanced Search possibility

There should be a more advanced search page. E.G. I want to search for a book with title "Foundation*" and author "*Asimov*". Currently this is almost impossible due to the large results you get from a query like "foundation".

This will improve searching a lot!

Searching for author name alone makes it easy to find the book you mention e.g. :

www.listal.com/search/books/1/?query=Isaac+Asimov
www.listal.com/search/books/1/?author=Isaac%20Asimov

You call that easy?

Asimov has written a lot of books, there are a lot of editions printed. (currently i see 186 & 116 books in the links you give). I'd like to be able to see only books by Asimov where the title contains "Foundation". For authors who are very productive, it can be a real drag searching through all of their books ;)

Plus, i'd like to be able to search only books in a certain language (e.g. only dutch books by asimov where the title contains "Foundation"). (see my other post www.listal.com/groups/viewthread/800/)

DerMika, for searching hard to find items (try adding the movie 'IT', haha - by sheer luck, it appears on first of 9 pages of results), its easier to find the item on outside source, IMDB for movies, Amazon for the rest of the categories, and then add it by its index number. Listal doesnt make a duplicate if you do it that way, it will add the correct version nicely to your 'owned' or 'watched' list.

And if you mean to search your own list, well, if you have all 186 books by Asimov in your collection, then I can see that being an issue, but otherwise, just looking for Asimov books in your own collection, or use word 'foundation' search only on your collection, you should find it no problemo.

Prelude, thanks for the advice. No I don't mean for my own collection (although it could be useful sometimes)

Unfortunately your tip doesn't work when we're talking about custom items (I happen to have a lot of custom items, almost all of my books). And if I don't find something, what do I do? I make a new entry in the database. The more difficult to find an item, the more chance you will have of duplicate entries in the database. So the advanced search wouldn't only benefit the users but also the administrators of Listal ;)

Sooner or later people will need more advanced search functionality than what is present now...

Tom, replying to your comment on searching by author I have a dumb question for you: What if I forgot who wrote the book? What if the only thing I remember is the title? Shouldn't you make finding items as easy as possible for us? ;)

This might seem like a silly idea and i'm sure it's already been explored, but why not outsource searching to google? leave advanced searching to the pros, and that allows Tom to concentrate on other aspects of listal.

google.com/coop/cse/

Google Co-op says it can be used to index an entire site, but it keeps search engine box and results page integrated into your sites's layout.

I also need more advanced search functionality. Because al my books are in other languages it's a must!

I have to agree on the lack of search functionality.
Less time lost searching means a bigger and better balanced book list for the Listal-hungry user ;-)

I will see if I can add searching authors + title at the same time at least. Anything that amazon has provided through it's api I can also try and create a form for that.

If you use that Amazon thingie, will the feature also work with custom items?