Gerrit Code Review - Searching Changes

Default Searches

Most basic searches can be viewed by clicking on a link along the top menu bar. The link will prefill the search box with a common search query, execute it, and present the results. If exactly one change matches the search, the change will be presented instead of a list.

Description	Default Query
All > Open	status:open '(or is:open)'
All > Merged	status:merged
All > Abandoned	status:abandoned
My > Drafts	owner:self is:draft
My > Watched Changes	status:open is:watched
My > Starred Changes	is:starred
My > Draft Comments	has:draft
Open changes in Foo	status:open project:Foo

Description

Default Query

All > Open

status:open '(or is:open)'

All > Merged

status:merged

All > Abandoned

status:abandoned

My > Drafts

owner:self is:draft

My > Watched Changes

status:open is:watched

My > Starred Changes

is:starred

My > Draft Comments

has:draft

Open changes in Foo

status:open project:Foo

Basic Change Search

Similar to many popular search engines on the web, just enter some text and let Gerrit figure out the meaning:

Description	Examples
Legacy numerical id	15183
Full or abbreviated Change-Id	Ic0ff33
Full or abbreviated commit SHA-1	d81b32ef
Email address	user@example.com
Approval requirement	Code-Review>=+2, Verified=1

Description

Examples

Legacy numerical id

15183

Full or abbreviated Change-Id

Ic0ff33

Full or abbreviated commit SHA-1

d81b32ef

Email address

user@example.com

Approval requirement

Code-Review>=+2, Verified=1

Search Operators

Operators act as restrictions on the search. As more operators are added to the same query string, they further restrict the returned results. Search can also be performed by typing only a text with no operator, which will match against a variety of fields.

age:'AGE'

Amount of time that has expired since the change was last updated with a review comment or new patch set. The age must be specified to include a unit suffix, for example age:2d:

s, sec, second, seconds
m, min, minute, minutes
h, hr, hour, hours
d, day, days
w, week, weeks (1 week is treated as 7 days)
mon, month, months (1 month is treated as 30 days)
y, year, years (1 year is treated as 365 days)

before:'TIME'/until:'TIME': Changes modified before the given 'TIME', inclusive. Must be in the format 2006-01-02[ 15:04:05[.890][ -0700]]; omitting the time defaults to 00:00:00 and omitting the timezone defaults to UTC.

after:'TIME'/since:'TIME': Changes modified after the given 'TIME', inclusive. Must be in the format 2006-01-02[ 15:04:05[.890][ -0700]]; omitting the time defaults to 00:00:00 and omitting the timezone defaults to UTC.

change:'ID': Either a legacy numerical 'ID' such as 15183, or a newer style Change-Id that was scraped out of the commit message.

conflicts:'ID': Changes that conflict with change 'ID'. Change 'ID' can be specified as a legacy numerical 'ID' such as 15183, or a newer style Change-Id that was scraped out of the commit message.

owner:'USER', o:'USER': Changes originally submitted by 'USER'. The special case of owner:self will find changes owned by the caller.

ownerin:'GROUP': Changes originally submitted by a user in 'GROUP'.

reviewer:'USER', r:'USER': Changes that have been, or need to be, reviewed by 'USER'. The special case of reviewer:self will find changes where the caller has been added as a reviewer.

reviewerin:'GROUP': Changes that have been, or need to be, reviewed by a user in 'GROUP'.

commit:'SHA1': Changes where 'SHA1' is one of the patch sets of the change.

project:'PROJECT', p:'PROJECT': Changes occurring in 'PROJECT'. If 'PROJECT' starts with ^ it matches project names by regular expression. The dk.brics.automaton library is used for evaluation of such patterns.

projects:'PREFIX': Changes occurring in projects starting with 'PREFIX'.

parentproject:'PROJECT': Changes occurring in 'PROJECT' or in one of the child projects of 'PROJECT'.

branch:'BRANCH': Changes for 'BRANCH'. The branch name is either the short name shown in the web interface or the full name of the destination branch with the traditional 'refs/heads/' prefix.

If 'BRANCH' starts with ^ it matches branch names by regular expression patterns. The dk.brics.automaton library is used for evaluation of such patterns.

topic:'TOPIC': Changes whose designated topic at upload was 'TOPIC'. This is often combined with 'branch:' and 'project:' operators to select all related changes in a series.

If 'TOPIC' starts with ^ it matches topic names by regular expression patterns. The dk.brics.automaton library is used for evaluation of such patterns.

ref:'REF': Changes where the destination branch is exactly the given 'REF' name. Since 'REF' is absolute from the top of the repository it must start with 'refs/'.

If 'REF' starts with ^ it matches reference names by regular expression patterns. The dk.brics.automaton library is used for evaluation of such patterns.

tr:'ID', bug:'ID': Search for changes whose commit message contains 'ID' and matches one or more of the trackingid sections in the server’s configuration file. This is typically used to search for changes that fix a bug or defect by the issue tracking system’s issue identifier.

label:'VALUE': Matches changes where the approval score 'VALUE' has been set during a review. See labels below for more detail on the format of the argument.

message:'MESSAGE': Changes that match 'MESSAGE' arbitrary string in the commit message body.

comment:'TEXT': Changes that match 'TEXT' string in any comment left by a reviewer.

path:'PATH': Matches any change touching file at 'PATH'. By default exact path matching is used, but regular expressions can be enabled by starting with ^. For example, to match all XML files use file:^.*\.xml$. The dk.brics.automaton library is used for the evaluation of such patterns.

The ^ required at the beginning of the regular expression not only denotes a regular expression, but it also has the usual meaning of anchoring the match to the start of the string. To match all Java files, use file:^.*\.java.

The entire regular expression pattern, including the ^ character, should be double quoted when using more complex construction (like ones using a bracket expression). For example, to match all XML files named like 'name1.xml', 'name2.xml', and 'name3.xml' use file:"^name[1-3].xml".

file:'NAME', f:'NAME': Matches any change touching a file containing the path component 'NAME'. For example a file:src will match changes that modify files named gerrit-server/src/main/java/Foo.java. Name matching is exact match, file:Foo.java finds any change touching a file named exactly Foo.java and does not match AbstractFoo.java.

Regular expression matching can be enabled by starting the string with ^. In this mode file: is an alias of path: (see above).

has:draft: True if there is a draft comment saved by the current user.
has:star: Same as 'is:starred', true if the change has been starred by the current user.

is:starred: Same as 'has:star', true if the change has been starred by the current user.
is:watched: True if this change matches one of the current user’s watch filters, and thus is likely to notify the user when it updates.
is:reviewed: True if there is at least one non-zero score on the change, in any approval category, by any user.
is:owner: True on any change where the current user is the change owner. Same as owner:self.
is:reviewer: True on any change where the current user is a reviewer. Same as reviewer:self.
is:open, is:pending: True if the change is either open or submitted, merge pending.
is:draft: True if the change is a draft.
is:closed: True if the change is either merged or abandoned.
is:submitted, is:merged, is:abandoned: Same as status:'STATE'.

is:mergeable: True if the change has no merge conflicts and could be merged into its destination branch.

status:open, status:pending: True if the change state is either 'review in progress' or 'submitted, merge pending'.
status:reviewed: Same as 'is:reviewed', matches if there is at least one non-zero score on the change, in any approval category, by any user.
status:submitted: Change has been submitted, but is waiting for a dependency.
status:closed: True if the change is either 'merged' or 'abandoned'.
status:merged: Change has been merged into the branch.
status:abandoned: Change has been abandoned.

added:'RELATION''LINES', deleted:'RELATION''LINES', delta/size:'RELATION''LINES': True if the number of lines added/deleted/changed satisfies the given relation for the given number of lines.

For example, added:>50 will be true for any change which adds at least 50 lines.

Valid relations are >=, >, ⇐, <, or no relation, which will match if the number of lines is exactly equal.

Argument Quoting

Operator values that are not bare words (roughly A-Z, a-z, 0-9, @, hyphen, dot and underscore) must be quoted for the query parser.

Quoting is accepted as either double quotes (e.g. message:"the value") or as matched curly braces (e.g. message:{the value}).

Boolean Operators

Unless otherwise specified, operators are joined using the AND boolean operator, thereby restricting the search results.

Parentheses can be used to force a particular precedence on complex operator expressions, otherwise OR has higher precedence than AND.

Negation

Any operator can be negated by prefixing it with -, for example -is:starred is the exact opposite of is:starred and will therefore return changes that are not starred by the current user.

The operator NOT (in all caps) is a synonym.

AND

The boolean operator AND (in all caps) can be used to join two other operators together. This results in a restriction of the results, returning only changes that match both operators.

OR

The boolean operator OR (in all caps) can be used to find changes that match either operator. This increases the number of results that are returned, as more changes are considered.

Labels

Label operators can be used to match approval scores given during a code review. The specific set of supported labels depends on the server configuration, however the Code-Review label is provided out of the box.

A label name is any of the following:

The label name. Example: label:Code-Review.
The label name followed by a ',' followed by a reviewer id or a group id. To make it clear whether a user or group is being looked for, precede the value by a user or group argument identifier ('user=' or 'group='). If an LDAP group is being referenced make sure to use 'ldap/<groupname>'.

A label name must be followed by a score, or an operator and a score. The easiest way to explain this is by example.

label:Code-Review=2
label:Code-Review=+2
label:Code-Review+2: Matches changes where there is at least one +2 score for Code-Review. The + prefix is optional for positive score values. If the + is used, the = operator is optional.
label:Code-Review=-2
label:Code-Review-2: Matches changes where there is at least one -2 score for Code-Review. Because the negative sign is required, the = operator is optional.
label:Code-Review=1: Matches changes where there is at least one +1 score for Code-Review. Scores of +2 are not matched, even though they are higher.
label:Code-Review>=1: Matches changes with either a +1, +2, or any higher score.
label:Code-Review=+2,aname: Matches changes with a +2 code review where the reviewer or group is aname.
label:Code-Review=2,user=jsmith: Matches changes with a +2 code review where the reviewer is jsmith.
label:Code-Review=+1,group=ldap/linux.workflow: Matches changes with a +1 code review where the reviewer is in the ldap/linux.workflow group.
label:Code-Review⇐-1: Matches changes with either a -1, -2, or any lower score.
is:open label:Code-Review+2 label:Verified+1 NOT label:Verified-1 NOT label:Code-Review-2: Matches changes that are ready to be submitted.
is:open (label:Verified-1 OR label:Code-Review-2): Changes that are blocked from submission due to a blocking score.

Magical Operators

Most of these operators exist to support features of Gerrit Code Review, and are not meant to be accessed by the average end-user. However, they are recognized by the query parser, and may prove useful in limited contexts to administrators or power-users.

visibleto:'USER-or-GROUP': Matches changes that are visible to 'USER' or to anyone who is a member of 'GROUP'. Here group names may be specified as either an internal group name, or if LDAP is being used, an external LDAP group name. The value may be wrapped in double quotes to include spaces or other special characters. For example, to match an LDAP group: visibleto:"CN=Developers, DC=example, DC=com".

This operator may be useful to test access control rules, however a change can only be matched if both the current user and the supplied user or group can see it. This is due to the implicit 'is:visible' clause that is always added by the server.
is:visible: Magical internal flag to prove the current user has access to read the change. This flag is always added to any query.
starredby:'USER': Matches changes that have been starred by 'USER'. The special case starredby:self applies to the caller.
watchedby:'USER': Matches changes that 'USER' has configured watch filters for. The special case watchedby:self applies to the caller.
draftby:'USER': Matches changes that 'USER' has left unpublished draft comments on. Since the drafts are unpublished, it is not possible to see the draft text, or even how many drafts there are. The special case of draftby:self will find changes where the caller has created a draft comment.

limit:'CNT': Limit the returned results to no more than 'CNT' records. This is automatically set to the page size configured in the current user’s preferences. Including it in a web query may lead to unpredictable results with regards to pagination.

Part of Gerrit Code Review