Hey @greg18 ,
Thanks for posting! The difference that you bring up about :filters being performed server-side/client-side was one of the major revisions of the second edition of the book, and if that’s the version you’re referring to it may not be clear enough still (I can’t check the book right now, but thanks for including page numbers).
In the first edition, filters were described as being performed client-side more or less without exception, but it should have been made clear that this will normally only apply to advanced filters (or filters applied to an already completed search). Whenever a :filter is applied to a fresh search Bubble will attempt to perform the full query on the server and in many (probably most) cases it can.
Backend workflows must be done server-side, so it seems logical that frontend workflows could also be server-side in the right conditions.
… so yes, you’re absolutely right about this. For the Chrome devtool question, I’d imagine the easiest way to tell whether Bubble is returning the full list or not (in which the the filter has not been applied on the server) is to check the result of the search in the Network tab. The server never sends more data than its conditions allow, unless it would need some client-side filtering to finish it up.