Filter bar

[John Rix]

I use filters very regularly to search for items in a table, and most commonly based on something I have in my clipboard. This means I need to:

1. Right-click on a column header,
2. Mouse down to the Filter submenu,
3. Mouse down to and click on the Custom Filter menu
4. Paste my search string,
5. (Optionally) choose the LIKE option and add % symbols either side of my search string
6. Click OK.

Doing this frequently becomes tiresome and annoying. I need a much faster means of filtering data. Aside from the Clear Filters icon above the data table, there is no immediate visual indicator when a filter has been applied (or what the filter actually is). This is not such a big concern, but a little irksome at least.

A filters row shown above/below the column headers where I can simply type/paste a filter value into any column and have it apply immediately would be much more convenient. The filter cells should be intelligent in their interpretation of the entered filters so, for example, any of the following would be handled appropriately:

* quick brown fox <– apply ‘LIKE’ match on ‘%quick brown fox%’
* ‘quick brown fox’ <– apply exact match
* 13424 <– apply exact match for numeric columns or ‘LIKE’ match for string columns
* [NOT] LIKE ‘quick brown fox %’ <– what it says
* != 123 (or other operators eg. >, >= etc.) <– what they say
* ‘abc’ OR ‘def’ <– match on either value
* etc.

[Aadarsh]

Hi,

Applying filters is simple. You don’t have to right click on column header every time and follow all these steps to apply a new filter.

You can just click on filter button in the toolbar and it will open up the dialog to apply filters. Choose the column header and write the respective filter to be applied.
Moreover not differentiating b/w quick brown fox and ‘quick brown fox’ is in order to give correct filter results. All mysql syntax compliant people will add %% at the beginning and end. Though a request to add %LIKE% in the dropdown can be considered but we can’t promise the timeline when we will be implementing it.

[John Rix]

I am aware of the filter button on the toolbar. However, this has several deficiencies:

1. Three steps are required before you can filter a specific column value – click the filter button, select the column from the drop down list (multiple clicks in and of itself), then click/tab to the Value field
2. Once you have set filters, you cannot use the filter button to edit them – it becomes a ‘Clear filters’ button which is not always what you need. At the very least there should be two separate buttons.
3. Once you have set filters, you can’t see what they are, other than by initiating the creation of an additional filter through right-clicking of a column header. Right now, this might seem trivial. However, if the suggestion in this issue (https://github.com/webyog/sqlyog-community/issues/2137) is to be implemented, this will become a bigger concern.

I would again stress that a filter bar where the filter values remain always visible and conveniently editable would be much more efficient than what we have now. Adding a %LIKE% option to the existing drop-down list would be a minor improvement, but I still consider currently functionality impractical.

Arguing about %%s is a separate matter and one I won’t bother getting into at this point.

To be clear, I have been a paying customer of SQLYog for many years now and am generally very happy with the application, so I don’t want to seem negative. It has served me very well. I just feel there is obvious room for improvement around the filtering facility.

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