cfsearch

Last update:

May 18, 2026

Description

Searches one or more Solr collections.A collection must be created and indexed before this tag can return search results.A collection can be created in these ways:

With the cfcollection tag
In the ColdFusion Administrator A collection can be indexed in the following ways:
In ColdFusion, with the cfindex tag
In the ColdFusion Administrator, which calls the cfindex tag For more information, see Building a Search Interface in the Developing ColdFusion Applications.

Syntax

cfsearch supports script style syntax: 

cfsearch(name="<search_name>", collection="<collection_name>"); 

<cfsearch 

collection = "collection name" 

name = "search name" 

category = "category[,category2,...]" 

categoryTree = "tree location" 

contextBytes = "number of bytes" 

contextHighlightBegin = "HTML string" 

contextHighlightEnd = "HTML string" 

contextPassages = "number of passages" 

criteria = "search expression" 

maxRows = "number" 

orderBy = "rank_order" 

previousCriteria = "criteria" 

startRow = "row number" 

status = "" 

suggestions = "suggestion option" 

type = "criteria">

Note:

You can specify this tag's attributes in an attributeCollection attribute whose value is a structure. Specify the structure name in the attributeCollection attribute and use the tag's attribute names as structure keys.

Note:

The attributes contextHighlightBegin, contextHighlightEnd, and contextBytes should be used only if Term Highlighting is enabled for the collection in the ColdFusion Administrator.

Enable Term Highlighting using Data & Services > ColdFusion Collections > Manage Collection.

History

ColdFusion (2025 release): Removed the attribute external.

ColdFusion 11: Removed the attributes language.

ColdFusion 10: New attribute orderBy

ColdFusion 9: Added support for Solr search engine.

ColdFusion MX 7:

Added category, categoryTree, status, suggestions, contextPassages, contextBytes, contextHighlightBegin, contextHighlightEnd, and previousCriteria attributes.
Added author, category, categoryTree, context, rank, size, recordsSearched, and type result columns.
Added information on the status structure and its associated keys.
Removed references to a separate K2 server and k2server.ini file.
Removed references to unregistered collections.
Removed references to external collections. ColdFusion MX now manages all collections through the Verity Search service.
Changed cflock recommendation. It is no longer a best practice to surround the cfsearch tag with a cflock tag. ColdFusion MX:
Deprecated the external attribute. It might not work, and might cause an error, in later releases. (ColdFusion stores this information about each collection; it automatically detects whether a collection is internal or external.) This tag supports absolute (also known as fully qualified) collection pathnames and mapped collection names.
Changed query result behavior: the cfindex tag can index the query results from a cfsearch operation.
Changed Verity operations behavior: ColdFusion supports Verity operations on Acrobat PDF files.
Changed multiple collection behavior: this tag can search multiple collections. In a multiple collection search, you cannot combine collections that are registered with K2Server and registered in another way.
Changed acceptable collection naming: this tag accepts collection names that include spaces.
Changed the following support: this tag supports Verity 2.6.1 and the LinguistX and ICU locales.
Changed thrown exceptions: this tag can throw the SEARCHENGINE exception.

Attributes

Attribute	Req/Opt	Default	Description
name	Required		Name of the search query.
collection	Required		One or more collection names. You can specify more than one collection unless you are performing a category search (that is, specifying category or categoryTree).
category	Optional		A list of categories, separated by commas, to which the search is limited. If specified, and the collection does not have categories enabled, ColdFusion throws an exception.
categoryTree	Optional		The location in a hierarchical category tree at which to start the search. ColdFusion searches at and below this level. If specified, and the collection does not have categories enabled, ColdFusion throws an exception. Can be used in addition to the category attribute.
criteria	Optional		Search criteria. Follows the syntax rules of the type attribute. The search is case-insensitive. Follow Solr syntax and delimiter character rules; see Solr search support in the Developing ColdFusion Applications.
contextBytes	OptionalSolr	300	The maximum number of bytes returned in the context summary.
contextHighlightBegin	OptionalSolr	<b>	The HTML to prepend to search terms in the context summary. Use this attribute in conjunction with contextHighlightEnd to highlight search terms in the context summary.
contextHighlightEnd	OptionalSolr	</b>	The HTML to append to search terms in the context summary. Use this attribute in conjunction with contextHighlightBegin to highlight search terms in the context summary.
contextPassages	OptionalSolr	0	The number of passages/sentences Solr returns in the context summary (that is, the context column of the results). The default is 0, which disables context summary.
language	Optional	english	Deprecated. This attribute is now ignored and the language of the collection is used to perform the search.
maxRows	Optional	all	Maximum number of rows to return in query results.
orderBy	Optional		Sorts the custom field column rank order. By default, it sorts in ascending order.
previousCriteria	Optional		The name of a result set from an existing set of search results. The search engine searches the result set for criteria without regard to the previous search score or rank. Use this attribute to implement searching within result sets.
startRow	Optional	1	Row number of the first row to get.
status	Optional		Specifies the name of the structure variable into which ColdFusion places search information, including alternative criteria suggestions (spelling corrections). For a list of keys in this structure, see the section Status structure keys.
suggestions	Optional	never	Specifies whether the search engine returns spelling suggestions for possibly misspelled words. Use one of the following options: Always: Always return spelling suggestions. Never: Never return spelling suggestions. positive integer: Return spelling suggestions if the number of documents retrieved by the search is less than or equal to the number specified. There is a small performance penalty for retrieving suggestion data.
type	Optional	standard	Specifies the parser that the engine uses to process the criteria. Standard DisMax

Usage

The cfsearch tag returns a query object whose columns you can reference in a cfoutput tag. For example, the following code specifies a search for the exact terms "filming" or "filmed":

<cfsearch 

name = "mySearch" 

collection = "myCollection" 

criteria = '<WILDCARD>`film{ing,ed}`' 

type="standard" 

startrow=1 

maxrows = "100"> 

<cfdump var = "#mySearch#">

In this example, the single-quotation mark (') and backtick (`) characters are used as delimiters.

To optimize search performance, always specify the maxrows attribute, setting it to a value that matches your application's needs. A value less than 300 helps to ensure optimal performance.Adobe does not recommend using the cflock tag with this tag; Solr provides the locking function. Using the cflock tag slows search performance.

The cfsearch tag result columns

Variable	Description
context	A context summary containing the search terms, highlighted in bold (by default). This is enabled if you set the contextpassages attribute to a number greater than zero.
url	Value of URLpath attribute in the cfindex tag used to populate a collection.
key	Value of the key attribute in the cfindex tag used to populate a collection.
title	Value of title attribute in cfindex tag used to populate the collection, including PDF and Office document titles. If a title is not extracted from the document, the tag uses the cfindex title attribute value for each row.
score	Relevancy score of document based on search criteria
custom1, custom2, custom3, custom4	Value of custom fields in cfindex tag used to populate a collection.
size	The number of bytes in the index document.
rank	The rank of this document in the search results.
author	Extracted from the HTML, Office, and PDF documents when available.
type	The MIME type of the document.
category	A list of the categories that were specified for this document when it was indexed.
categoryTree	A hierarchical category tree, or serial list of categories, that was specified for this document when it was indexed. Only a single tree is returned.
summary	Contents of automatic summary generated by cfindex.
recordCount	Number of records returned in record set
currentRow	Current row that cfoutput is processing.
columnList	List of column names within record set.
recordsSearched	Number of records searched. This is the same value for each row in the record set. Corresponds to the searched key in the status structure.

Status structure keys

Variable	Description
found	The number of documents that contain the search criteria.
searched	The number of documents searched. Corresponds to the recordsSearched column in the search results.
time	The number of milliseconds the search took.
suggestedQuery	An alternative query that might produce better results. This often contains corrected spellings of search terms. Present only when the suggestions tag attribute criteria is met.
keyword	A struct of structs that consists of keys corresponding to the terms specified in the search criteria. Each struct key maps to a struct containing key-value pairs where each key is a suggested keyword and the corresponding value is the number of times the keyword appears in the index data. Keywords appear only if the search criteria is not met. An empty struct is returned otherwise.

Example

<!--- #3 (search by CF key) -----------------------------> 

<cfsearch 

name = "book" 

collection = "custom_book" 

criteria = "cf_key=bookid2" 

maxrows = "100"> 

<cfoutput> 

url=#book.url#<br> 

key=#book.key#<br> 

title=#book.titleE#<br> 

score=#book.score#<br> 

custom1=#book.custom1#<br> 

custom2=#book.custom2#<br> 

summary=#book.summary#<br> 

recordcount=#book.recordcount#<br> 

currentrow=#book.currentrow#<br> 

columnlist=#book.columnlist#<br> 

recordssearched=#book.recordssearched#<br> 

</cfoutput> 

<cfdump var = #book#>

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