Search doesn't find candidates named "Zoë"

[semiprime]

trafficstars

Candidate Zoë Olivia John exists here: https://candidates.democracyclub.org.uk/person/80674/zoe-olivia-john

However, whatever I put in the search box, it doesn't give her as a result on the first page. I tried "Zoë Olivia John", "Zoë John", "Zoë" (zero results!), "Olivia John". I tried "Zoë" with and without the diaeresis. The best I managed was just searching for "Olivia" (near the bottom of page 2 of three pages).

The underlying issue seems to be the search not processing the diaerisis correctly. (In Zoë John's case this is compounded by the hundreds of Johns which push her further down the results.)

Searching for just "Zoe" (no diaerisis) brings up four pages of "Zoe"s, but that includes only two "Zoë"s - both of whom have an alternative name of "Zoe" provided. I guess I could fix my case by adding "Zoe Olivia John" without the diaerisis as an alternative name, but the underlying issue seems to be that the search feature doesn't process "Zoë" correctly.

I assume there will be a similar problem for any "Chloë"s etc.

[VirginiaDooley]

@semiprime Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I'll have a closer look.

[sjorford]

I still don't see anything when searching for Zoë John?

[symroe]

I see them in the search now? Is this fixed?

[VirginiaDooley]

Zoë John

I think the lingering issue is that when you simply search for "Zoë" you get a list of "Zoe"'s

[sjorford]

So it looks like:

https://candidates.democracyclub.org.uk/search?q=Zoë+John now finds Zoë John

https://candidates.democracyclub.org.uk/search?q=Zoë finds lots of Zoe's and a couple of Zoë's at the very end, but not Zoë John

[VirginiaDooley]

I wonder if we continue to optimise for individual use cases, or rather zoom out and see what other improvements can be made to search functionality that might DRY up some of this code?