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Advanced user search

Directly using Management API to leverage advanced user search conditions.

Perform a search request​

Use GET /api/users for searching users. Note it is a Management API that requires auth like others. See Interact with Management API for the interaction recipe.

Sample​

Request

curl --location --request GET 'http://<your-logto-endpoint>/api/users?search=%25alice%25'

Response

An array of User entity.

[
  {
    "id": "MgUzzDsyX0iB",
    "username": "alice_123",
    "primaryEmail": "[email protected]",
    "primaryPhone": null,
    "name": null,
    "avatar": null
    // ...
  }
]

Parameters​

A search request consists of the following parameter keys:

  • Search keywords: search, search.*
  • Search mode for fields: mode, mode.* (default value 'like', available ['exact', 'like', 'similar_to', 'posix'])
  • Joint mode: joint or jointMode (default value 'or', available ['or', 'and'])
  • Is case-sensitive: isCaseSensitive (default value false)

This API has pagination enabled.

Let's go through them via some examples. All search params will be formatted as a constructor of URLSearchParams.

note

Search mode is set to like by default, which uses approximate string matching ("fuzzy search").

info

All fuzzy search modes only support matching one value per field. If you need to match multiple values for a single field, you should use the "exact" mode. See Exact match and case sensitivity for details.

If you want to perform a fuzzy search over all available fields, just provide a value for key search. It will use the like operator under the hood:

new URLSearchParams([['search', '%foo%']]);

This search will iterate over all available fields in a user search, i.e. id, primaryEmail, primaryPhone, username, name.

Specify fields​

What if you want to limit the search in name only? To search someone that includes foo in their name, just use the . symbol to specify the field:

new URLSearchParams([['search.name', '%foo%']]);

Remember nested fields are not supported, e.g. search.name.first will result an error.

You can also specify multiple fields at the same time:

new URLSearchParams([
  ['search.name', '%foo%'],
  ['search.primaryEmail', '%@gmail.com'],
]);

Means to search users that have foo in name OR their email ends with @gmail.com.

Changing the joint mode​

If you want the API only returns the result that satisfies ALL the conditions, set the joint mode to and:

new URLSearchParams([
  ['search.name', '%foo%'],
  ['search.primaryEmail', '%@gmail.com'],
  ['joint', 'and'],
]);

Means to search users that have foo in name AND their email ends with @gmail.com.

Exact match and case sensitivity​

Say you want to search whose name is exact "Alice". You can set mode.name to use exact match.

new URLSearchParams([
  ['search.name', 'Alice'],
  ['mode.name', 'exact'],
]);

You may find it has the same effect when using the like mode (default) v.s. specifying exact. One difference is exact mode uses = for comparing while like uses like or ilike. Theoretically = should have a better performance.

Plus, in exact mode, you can pass multiple values for matching, and they will be connected with or:

new URLSearchParams([
  ['search.name', 'Alice'],
  ['search.name', 'Bob'],
  ['mode.name', 'exact'],
]);

It will match the users with name "Alice" OR "Bob".

By default search is case-insensitive. To be more precise, set the search as case-sensitive:

new URLSearchParams([
  ['search.name', 'Alice'],
  ['search.name', 'Bob'],
  ['mode.name', 'exact'],
  ['isCaseSensitive', 'true'],
]);

Note isCaseSensitive is a global config. Thus EVERY field will follow it.

Regular expression (RegEx)​

PostgreSQL supports two types of regular expressions, similar to and posix. Set mode to similar_to or posix to search by regular expressions:

new URLSearchParams([
  ['search', '^T.?m Scot+$'],
  ['mode', 'posix'],
]);

Note Mode similar_to only works in case-sensitive searches.

Match mode override​

By default, all keywords will inherit the match mode from the general search:

new URLSearchParams([
  ['search', '^T.?m Scot+$'],
  ['mode', 'posix'],
  ['search.primaryEmail', 'tom%'], // Posix mode
  ['joint', 'and'],
]);

To override for specific field:

new URLSearchParams([
  ['search', '^T.?m Scot+$'],
  ['mode', 'posix'],
  ['search.primaryEmail', 'tom%'], // Like mode
  ['mode.primaryEmail', 'like'],
  ['search.phone', '0{3,}'], // Posix mode
  ['joint', 'and'],
]);