Full-text search in databases

Last modified: 07 October 2022

To learn how to search outside databases, see the search section in this documentation.

You can search for data in your database or in a group of databases without knowing the exact location of data.

Search for data in databases, schemes, and separate tables

  1. In the Database tool window ( View | Tool Windows | Database) , select objects in which you want to perform your search. You can select a database or a group of databases, a scheme or schemes, or even separate tables.

  2. Right-click the selection and select Tools | Full-Text Search. Alternatively, press .

  3. In the search field of the Full-text Search dialog, type your search request and click Search.

  4. In the Find tool window, review search results. To open a database object, double-click it. To return to the Find tool window (View | Tool Windows | Find), press .

    https://resources.jetbrains.com/help/img/idea/2023.1/full_text_search_for_databases.png
    Gif

tip

To pin the tab with search results, right-click the tab and select Pin Tab.

note

For Apache Cassandra, IntelliJ IDEA creates several queries for one table, because the database does not support the OR condition. You can preview all searching statements in the Preview (data_source_name) pane.

Full-text search options

Option

Description

Match case

Searches only for those instances that are written the same way as the query (preserving the case). A search for Index will return Index, Indexes, Indexing but not index.

Contains

Searches for a given combination of characters in words. For example, if you search for ETTE, you receive all LIKE '%ETTE%' results (ANNETTE, JEANETTE, GILLETTE, BETTE) from all the columns.

Search anywhere in string

Starts with

Searches for a given combination of characters in the word beginning. For example, if you search for JO, you receive all LIKE 'JO%' results (JOHNSON, JONES, JOYCE, JOAN) from all the columns.

Prefix search

Ends with

Searches for a given combination of characters in the word beginning. For example, if you search for TIN, you receive all LIKE '%TIN' results (MARTIN, AUSTIN, KRISTIN, JUSTIN) from all the columns.

Suffix search

Matches

Searches for an exact combination of characters. For example, if you search for BETTE, you receive all LIKE 'BETTE' results BETTE from all the columns.

Full match search

LIKE pattern

Searches for a combination of characters and SQL wildcards. For example, you can search for a_%_% and find any LIKE 'a_%_%' results that start with a and have at least 3 characters in length ANDERSON, ALLEN, AMY, ANNA.

LIKE pattern search

Text columns

Searches only in columns that support the LIKE operation. For example, CHAR, VARCHAR, TINYTEXT, TEXT, and DATE (Oracle).

Only columns with full-text search indexes

Searches only in columns that have a created index. This feature is supported only for PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB. The query for PostgreSQL is where col @@ plainto_tsquery('query'). The query for MySQL and MariaDB is where match(col) against ('query' in natural language mode).

Numeric columns

Searches only in columns with the numeric data type like INT, MEDIUMINT, SMALLINT, BIGINT and others.

All columns

Searches in all types of columns. For example, you can run this search to find a JSON element.

Show first N matches per table/view

Limits a number of found results for a table or a view.