Advanced search

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  • Tier: Premium, Ultimate
  • Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated

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  • Moved to GitLab Premium in 13.9.

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Use advanced search to find exactly what you need across your entire GitLab instance.

With advanced search:

  • Identify code patterns across all projects to refactor shared components more efficiently.
  • Locate security vulnerabilities in dependencies across your entire organization at once.
  • Track usage of deprecated functions or libraries throughout all repositories.
  • Find discussions buried in issues, merge requests, or comments.
  • Discover existing solutions instead of reinventing functionality that already exists.

Advanced search works in projects, issues, merge requests, milestones, users, epics, code, comments, commits, and wikis.

Available scopes

Scopes describe the type of data you’re searching. The following scopes are available for advanced search:

Search level Code Comments Commits Epics Issues Merge requests Milestones Projects Users Wikis Notes
Global ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ An administrator can disable global search scopes. On GitLab Self-Managed, global search is not available when limited indexing is enabled by default. An administrator can enable global search for limited indexing.
Group ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓  
Project ✓ ✓ ✓   ✓ ✓ ✓   ✓ ✓  

Syntax

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  • Refining user search introduced in GitLab 15.10.

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Advanced search uses simple_query_string, which supports both exact and fuzzy queries.

When you search for a user, the fuzzy query is used by default. You can refine user search with simple_query_string.

Syntax Description Example
" Exact search "gem sidekiq"
~ Fuzzy search J~ Doe
\| Or display \| banner
+ And display +banner
- Exclude display -banner
* Partial bug error 50*
` \ ` Escape \*md
# Issue ID #23456
! Merge request ID !23456
Syntax Description Example
filename: Filename filename:*spec.rb
path: Repository location (full or partial matches) path:spec/workers/
extension: File extension without . (exact matches only) extension:js
blob: Git object ID (exact matches only) blob:998707*

Examples

Query Description
rails -filename:gemfile.lock Returns rails in all files except the gemfile.lock file.
RSpec.describe Resolvers -*builder Returns RSpec.describe Resolvers that does not start with builder.
bug \| (display +banner) Returns bug or both display and banner.
helper -extension:yml -extension:js Returns helper in all files except files with a .yml or .js extension.
helper path:lib/git Returns helper in all files with a lib/git* path (for example, spec/lib/gitlab).

Known issues

  • You can search only files smaller than 1 MB. For more information, see issue 195764. For GitLab Self-Managed, an administrator can configure the Maximum file size indexed setting.
  • You can use advanced search only on the default branch of a project. For more information, see issue 229966.

  • The search query must not contain any of the following characters: 

    . , : ; / ` ' = ? $ & ^ | < > ( ) { } [ ] @

    For more information, see issue 325234.

  • Search results show only the first match in a file. For more information, see issue 668.