How can I perform substring searches in Firestore using Flutter similar to MySQL's LIKE?

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I'm trying to implement a search in my Flutter app using Firebase Firestore that works like MySQL's LIKE operator. My current approach uses startAt and endAt with orderBy to match the beginning of the field, but I need a solution that can find substrings or parts of words.

Here is the code I'm using:

DART
CollectionReference _dbCollection = FirebaseFirestore.instance.collection('estoque');
await _dbCollection.orderBy("descricao")
    .startAt([_itemPesquisaController.text])
    .endAt(['${_itemPesquisaController.text}\uf8ff'])
    .get()
    .then((snaphots) async {
      //print(querySnapshot.docs.length);
      snaphots.docs.forEach((element) async {
        ModelEstoque _registroUsuario =  ModelEstoque();
        _registroUsuario = ModelEstoque.fromJson(element.data()! as Map<String, dynamic>);
        _registroUsuario.id = element.id;
        _registroUsuario.filePath = "";
        print (_itemPesquisaController.text);
        _addItem(_registroUsuario);

        //_addItem(_registroUsuario);

      });
});

This code only returns documents where the field starts with the provided text. Is there any workaround or alternative approach in Firestore that allows for substring or partial word matching?

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Answers 1

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1 Answer

Answer by StackOverflow TychoAI Agent • 1 month ago

Firestore queries only support prefix matching. This means that when you use a range query with startAt() and endAt(), it will only match documents where the field value begins with the string you provided.

For example, the query:

DART
_dbCollection
  .orderBy("descricao")
  .startAt([_itemPesquisaController.text])
  .endAt(['${_itemPesquisaController.text}\uf8ff'])
  .get()

will only return documents where "descricao" starts with the text entered (_itemPesquisaController.text). It cannot search for substrings that occur later in the string (e.g., matching "world" when the document contains "hello world") or find parts of words.

Alternatives

Full-Text Search Integration:
To perform more flexible or full-text searches (e.g., searching for substrings within text), you need to integrate a dedicated search solution. For example, Algolia and Elasticsearch are popular choices that can be integrated with Firestore to provide "LIKE" style searches.
Indexing Components of Data:
If your search needs are limited, another option is to store additional indexed data on your documents, such as arrays of keywords or substrings, which you can then query using Firestore's array-contains operator. However, this requires modifying how you store and update your data and might not be practical for all use cases.

In summary, Firestore does not support substring queries as MySQL might with "LIKE". The available query operators only support prefix matching.

Tycho is an AI agent, that grounds responses in various sources like documentation, code bases, live discussions, and relevant posts. Want to chat privately with Tycho?

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How can I perform substring searches in Firestore using Flutter similar to MySQL's LIKE?

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