Weird search algorithm in selector component

App Building
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1

When using this component: Retool Select Component (Web Apps)

I'm trying to use the selector component to search for clients' names.
The names are text strings (about 300 rows).

Actual behaviour
The search works, but exhibits some weird behaviour based on its internal algorithm:
image

Notice how it gets the "c" in apache and then attaches it to the "omput" further into the string. It does a similar thing on line three.

Expected behaviour
Full matching of the input text as per every other search on the planet.

Resolution

  • It should do complete matches first ie "comput" appears in both line 1 and 3
  • Then it should order those based on distance from the start of the string
  • Then it should do its current pattern matching last.

If I'm not the only person to find this a bit strange, perhaps @tess (thanks!) could log it for the dev team to consider.

1 Like
2

Hi Stewart,

My guess is that this is a result of fuzzy search mode being case sensitive, at least in a precedence manner.

I don't think you can configure the selector's search mode to be fuzzy and case-sensitive, but you might be able to get closer behavior for what you want by switching the mode to one of the non-fuzzy options:

Retool selector component search mode example

From the component docs you linked above:

Retool selector component search mode docs

1 Like
3

Thanks @dguzzo!

I switched to case insensitive search as you suggested and while not perfect, it is much better than the fuzzy search.

I had never bothered to check that property so thanks very much for the solution.
:pray:

2 Likes
4

You're welcome! Glad to hear it's an improvement.

1 Like