[Koha-devel] Patron searching change 'start_wtih' / 'contain' Bug 15252 / 15930

[Nick Clemens]

Hello all,

In bug 15252 a change was introduced to fix the problem of too many /
irrelevant results when searching for patrons with multi-part names e.g.
'jean paul' 'mac beth' 'le guelec'

This change now defaults many searches to 'start_with' and does not split
terms for a 'start_with' search. This does not affect members-home.pl, but
many other patrons searches request.pl, common/patron_search.tt ...

A side effect of this change is that searching for a patrons full name i.e.
'Henry Acevedo' or 'Edna Acosta' returns no results as it is searching for
[firstname like 'edna acosta%'] it also prevents searches like 'Ed aco'
from finding results.

The searches above returned results through 3.18, but 15252 is in 3.20.8
and 3.22.2 and master

As we are seeing libraries upgrade to the newer versions we are hearing
complaints as this is a big behaviour change from their viewpoint.

Jonathan and I have been discussing on Bug 15930 and the options we have so
far are:
1/ add a special case to search on firstname and surname (if start_with)
2/ add a pref to default on contains or start_with
3/ let the libraries who want a different behavior modify the default with
some JS code
4/ add phrase searching with quotes and split terms otherwise

Ideally we want to allow for ease in finding multi part names, but not
introduce a change for single part names

Thoughts?
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