I’m currently doing some testing to determine the best way to achieve something in Bubble (something which is a very common requirement, and should be very simple but, due to some of the limitations of Bubble’s database query functionality, is way more challenging than it should be), and I’d be interested to hear how other Bubble devs have approached this in the past, or any creative ways of achieving it. The Situation There’s a Datatype of ‘Tag’ (with approx 100 Tags in the database) There’s a Datatype of ‘Content’ (with 15,000 entries in the database) Each Content item can have one or more Tags assigned to it The Requirement The requirement is simple: A user should be able to search for Content items by Tag, by selecting one or more Tags from a multi select dropdown. There are 2 required use-cases: Return ALL Content Items that contain 1 or more of the selected Tags Return ONLY Content Items that contain ALL of the selected Tags In both cases, the Content Item’s Name AND the name of all associated Tags should be displayed on the page. The Problem This is an extremely common requirement in any kind of listing app (whether it’s blog posts, products, or any other kind of item that can have associated tags/categories etc.) and yet doing this in Bubble can be very difficult. I’ve seen a lot of apps that try do do this and end up being extremely slow and/or costly in WU. Doing this in a regular SQL database is both very simple AND fast, and fully scalable (I’ll share some examples later), but because Bubble only provides very basic DB search functionality, I’ve never come across a truly satisfactory way to do this in Bubble. The Solution Over the years I’ve seen a number of discussions, on the forum, and elsewhere, about various ways to do this, and I’ve built this type of thing into multiple apps myself with various different approaches - but mostly on fairly small datasets (where the challenges are less noticeable). If the datasets are small, then there’s not much issue - everything can be done client-side and there’s no real problem. But on a larger database things get more complicated. So, I’m currently testing multiple approaches for this (about 8 different methods so far) and none of them are truly satisfactory (some are completely un-usable at scale - 2 are working very well, but have some limitations). So, before concluding my testing and sharing my findings, I’d be interested to know how (if at all) other Bubble devs have approached this challenge (what should be a very simple thing to do). The solution must: Be truly scalable (i.e. work just as well on a database of 100k Content Items as with 100) Be reasonably performant (i.e. not take 15 seconds+ to return anything) Be reasonably WU efficient Preferably allow the User to select any number of Tags to use in the search. Preferably also display the total count of matching Content items on the page Use the Bubble database I look forward to seeing some solutions :slight_smile:

I’m looking forward your benchmark results on contains keyword(s) :slight_smile:

My 10 minute solution for the second problem: [image] adamhholmes: Return ONLY Content Items that contain ALL of the selected Tags [CleanShot 2024-07-30 at 20.47.45@2x] etc up to the max number of tags you want to support. The limitation is editor maintainability, and having a limit on the number of tags based on how many constraints you include. For the user, in performance terms, this is equivalent to an expression like Tags contains all of (List of tags). Of course, ignore empty constraints will get rid of most constraints when they normally only select a handful of tags. Would I do it in a production app? Maybe, I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone about it or I’d hide in a corner :sweat_smile: : I think the first problem is much harder (all content that contains at least one selected tag). [image] dorilama: I’m looking forward your benchmark results on contains keyword(s) :slight_smile: Yeah, I’ve found this is abysmal on searches with lots of text (e.g blog posts) to the point of not being useable.

[image] georgecollier: I’ve found this is abysmal on searches with lots of text (e.g blog posts) to the point of not being useable I was just thinking about the tags being a single text field, not running it on the whole blog post.

İs this actually work ? I have tried constructing the selected in every scenario possible but it actually doesn’t work as intended

İs this performant ? I have 73.600 tags in my case

[image] Is this the right way to use "contains keyword(s)"? Need help an example: contains keywords the cat is on the table [image] will match these value in the database (just some example): cat table CAT table the cat is on the yellow table the table is a cat your cat is not a TABLE I think my TaBLe is a Cat one cat plus one cat equals a table many cats on the table tables cat tables cats but it will not match: the cat is on the tablet catss table i just have one cat the table is empty I hope this helps cat2smile_cat Cheers Mariano

[image] dorilama: I was just thinking about the tags being a single text field, Ah of course, good shout. Hadn’t thought about that as I never read too much into how contains keyword(s) actually works.

I think it doesn’t work any of this type of scenarios

I’m sure you can see how it can be used on one use case once you understand how the operator works [image] dorilama: I was just thinking about the tags being a single text field, not running it on the whole blog post.

[image] georgecollier: etc up to the max number of tags you want to support. The limitation is editor maintainability, and having a limit on the number of tags based on how many constraints you include. If only you could programmatically add constraints… is Data API allowed? :wink:

Bubble DB Challenge - Searching By Tags

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dorilama July 30, 2024, 12:56pm 11

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Bubble DB Challenge - Searching By Tags

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