Case-Insensitive Search

[KobyW]

Summary

Searching in LinkAce appears to be case-sensitive. For example; searching for abc does not return results for links titled ABC01. This behavior has confused some users who expect searches to be case-insensitive by default.

Proposed Solution

• Implement case-insensitive search by default for the /search page
• Optionally provide a checkbox to enable case-sensitive search filter if needed.

Contribution

I am willing to implement this feature myself. I’d like to confirm with the maintainer:

• Should case-insensitive search be the default behavior, with case-sensitive as an optional toggle?
• Or do you prefer a different approach?

Additional Context

Example scenario:

• Link: ABC01.com
• Search query: abc01
• Current behavior: No results.
• Desired behavior: ABC01.com should be returned.

[Kovah]

Kinda related: #776

I think the major problem here is how databases handle searching stuff, not LinkAce itself. Years before I made the (wrong?) decision that the default database should use binary collation, which allows for a better differentiation for a wide range of unicode characters. Without that uses were facing issues with duplicate checks and of course search.

So, now the issue is that just implementing this would definitely break existing instances of LinkAce. If you want to implement this, a UI setting or at least an env setting is needed, and the default must be compatible to old versions. Maybe @chrissawyerfan4 could jump in with this?

[landure]

A possible solution is to add a meilisearch backend for search.