# Search

:eye: [PREVIEW](https://greenelab.github.io/lab-website-template/testbed#search)

The template can dynamically (when a visitor comes to your site) filter items on a page based on a search.

## How can a search happen?

* A visitor types in a search box component (see below).
* A visitor clicks on a link with e.g. `?search=some search` in the URL, like a [tag](/lab-website-template-docs/basics/components/tags.md) or a [team member page research link](/lab-website-template-docs/basics/team-members.md) (see `aliases`).

## What items are filtered?

By default, the only items on the page that are filtered the [card](/lab-website-template-docs/basics/components/card.md), [citation](/lab-website-template-docs/basics/citations.md), and [post excerpt](/lab-website-template-docs/basics/components/post-excerpt.md) components.

You could customize this in `/_scripts/search.js` to filter any kind of item that is selectable with a [CSS selector](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_Selectors), for example `p` for paragraph elements.

## How are items filtered?

You can search for terms, phrases, and tags:

`term1 term2 "full phrase 1" "full phrase 2" "tag: some-tag" "tag: another-tag"`.

Items that contain **all of the terms**, **at least one of the phrases**, and **at least one of the tags** will be considered a match. Matching is case insensitive. Tags are also insensitive to hyphens, e.g. `open science` is considered the same as `open-science`.

Search words will be highlighted in the results (if they're longer than 2 characters). In addition to the visible text content of the item, tooltip and other content are also searched (via the `data-tooltip` and `data-search` attributes).

## Relevant components

You can put a search box component on the page to let visitors type in their own search:

```liquid
{% include search-box.html %}
```

This also updates the URL so they can conveniently link to that page with that search.

To show info about what items are being filtered, e.g. *Showing 12 of 60*, you can put a search info component on a page:

```liquid
{% include search-info.html %}
```

Only visible if something is being searched.


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://greene-lab.gitbook.io/lab-website-template-docs/basics/components/search.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.