Trac Ticket Queries

In addition to reports, Trac provides support for custom ticket queries, used to display lists of tickets meeting a specified set of criteria.

To configure and execute a custom query, switch to the View Tickets module from the navigation bar, and select the Custom Query link.

Filters

When you first go to the query page the default filter will display tickets relevant to you:

• If logged in then all open tickets it will display open tickets assigned to you.
• If not logged in but you have specified a name or email address in the preferences then it will display all open tickets where your email (or name if email not defined) is in the CC list.
• If not logged and no name/email defined in the preferences then all open issues are displayed.

Current filters can be removed by clicking the button to the left with the minus sign on the label. New filters are added from the pulldown lists at the bottom corners of the filters box ('And' conditions on the left, 'Or' conditions on the right). Filters with either a text box or a pulldown menu of options can be added multiple times to perform an or of the criteria.

You can use the fields just below the filters box to group the results based on a field, or display the full description for each ticket.

Once you've edited your filters click the Update button to refresh your results.

Navigating Tickets

Clicking on one of the query results will take you to that ticket. You can navigate through the results by clicking the Next Ticket or Previous Ticket links just below the main menu bar, or click the Back to Query link to return to the query page.

You can safely edit any of the tickets and continue to navigate through the results using the Next/Previous/Back to Query links after saving your results. When you return to the query any tickets which were edited will be displayed with italicized text. If one of the tickets was edited such that it no longer matches the query criteria the text will also be greyed. Lastly, if a new ticket matching the query criteria has been created, it will be shown in bold.

The query results can be refreshed and cleared of these status indicators by clicking the Update button again.

Saving Queries

Trac allows you to save the query as a named query accessible from the reports module. To save a query ensure that you have Updated the view and then click the Save query button displayed beneath the results. You can also save references to queries in Wiki content, as described below.

Note: one way to easily build queries like the ones below, you can build and test the queries in the Custom report module and when ready - click Save query. This will build the query string for you. All you need to do is remove the extra line breaks.

Note: you must have the REPORT_CREATE permission in order to save queries to the list of default reports. The Save query button will only appear if you are logged in as a user that has been granted this permission. If your account does not have permission to create reports, you can still use the methods below to save a query.

Using TracLinks

You may want to save some queries so that you can come back to them later. You can do this by making a link to the query from any Wiki page.

[query:status=new|assigned|reopened&version=1.0 Active tickets against 1.0]

Which is displayed as:

Active tickets against 1.0

This uses a very simple query language to specify the criteria (see Query Language).

Alternatively, you can copy the query string of a query and paste that into the Wiki link, including the leading ? character:

[query:?status=new&status=assigned&status=reopened&group=owner Assigned tickets by owner]

Which is displayed as:

Assigned tickets by owner

Using the [[TicketQuery]] Macro

The ​TicketQuery macro lets you display lists of tickets matching certain criteria anywhere you can use WikiFormatting.

Example:

[[TicketQuery(version=0.6|0.7&resolution=duplicate)]]

This is displayed as:

No results

Just like the query: wiki links, the parameter of this macro expects a query string formatted according to the rules of the simple ticket query language. This also allows displaying the link and description of a single ticket:

[[TicketQuery(id=123)]]

This is displayed as:

No results

A more compact representation without the ticket summaries is also available:

[[TicketQuery(version=0.6|0.7&resolution=duplicate, compact)]]

This is displayed as:

No results

Finally, if you wish to receive only the number of defects that match the query, use the count parameter.

[[TicketQuery(version=0.6|0.7&resolution=duplicate, count)]]

This is displayed as:

0

Customizing the table format

You can also customize the columns displayed in the table format (format=table) by using col=<field> - you can specify multiple fields and what order they are displayed by placing pipes (|) between the columns like below:

[[TicketQuery(max=3,status=closed,order=id,desc=1,format=table,col=resolution|summary|owner|reporter)]]

This is displayed as:

Results (1 - 3 of 13)

1 2 3 4 5 →

Ticket	Resolution	Summary	Owner	Reporter
#58	duplicate	Start using "RETURNING" for DB IDs of things just added		Kris Deugau
#34	fixed	SQL cleanup - use DBI ? substitutions, move all SQL into IPDB.pm		Kris Deugau
#29	invalid	test ticket	Kris Deugau	Kris Deugau

1 2 3 4 5 →

Full rows

In table format you can also have full rows by using rows=<field> like below:

[[TicketQuery(max=3,status=closed,order=id,desc=1,format=table,col=resolution|summary|owner|reporter,rows=description)]]

This is displayed as:

Results (1 - 3 of 13)

1 2 3 4 5 →

Ticket	Resolution	Summary	Owner	Reporter
#58	duplicate	Start using "RETURNING" for DB IDs of things just added		Kris Deugau
Description	Currently several bits do "INSERT blah blah blah", then "SELECT currval(sequence)" to retrieve the ID of the thing just inserted for further work. These constructs should be switched to "INSERT blah blah blah RETURNING idfield" instead, where supported by DBI.
#34	fixed	SQL cleanup - use DBI ? substitutions, move all SQL into IPDB.pm		Kris Deugau
Description	Much of the SQL currently uses: $sth = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO table (cols) values ('$literal1','$literal2')"); $sth->execute; instead of: $sth = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO table (cols) values (?,?)"); $sth->execute($literal1, $literal2); Switching to CGI::Simple (#15) is exposing several places where this is problematic. This is also something of an SQL-injection security issue - using DBI's parameter replacement means that user data goes right into the table, instead of munging the SQL (deliberately or otherwise).
#29	invalid	test ticket	Kris Deugau	Kris Deugau
Description	testing email

1 2 3 4 5 →

Query Language

query: TracLinks and the [[TicketQuery]] macro both use a mini “query language” for specifying query filters. Basically, the filters are separated by ampersands (&). Each filter then consists of the ticket field name, an operator, and one or more values. More than one value are separated by a pipe (|), meaning that the filter matches any of the values. To include a literal & or | in a value, escape the character with a backslash (\).

The available operators are:

=	the field content exactly matches one of the values
~=	the field content contains one or more of the values
^=	the field content starts with one of the values
$=	the field content ends with one of the values

All of these operators can also be negated:

!=	the field content matches none of the values
!~=	the field content does not contain any of the values
!^=	the field content does not start with any of the values
!$=	the field content does not end with any of the values

The date fields created and modified can be constrained by using the = operator and specifying a value containing two dates separated by two dots (..). Either end of the date range can be left empty, meaning that the corresponding end of the range is open. The date parser understands a few natural date specifications like "3 weeks ago", "last month" and "now", as well as Bugzilla-style date specifications like "1d", "2w", "3m" or "4y" for 1 day, 2 weeks, 3 months and 4 years, respectively. Spaces in date specifications can be left out to avoid having to quote the query string.

created=2007-01-01..2008-01-01	query tickets created in 2007
created=lastmonth..thismonth	query tickets created during the previous month
modified=1weekago..	query tickets that have been modified in the last week
modified=..30daysago	query tickets that have been inactive for the last 30 days

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See also: TracTickets, TracReports, TracGuide