Full-Text Search Guide

Full-text search allows you to search through log body content without specifying field names. This guide covers all aspects of text searching in SigNoz.

Quoted Text

Use quotes for exact phrase matching in the log body:

'failed to connect to database'

This finds logs where the body contains the exact phrase "failed to connect to database".

Unquoted Text

Without quotes, each word is searched separately in the log body:

error database connection

This searches for logs where the body contains 'error' AND 'database' AND 'connection' (not necessarily together).

Escaping Special Characters

When searching for text that contains special characters, enclose your search in single quotes and escape only these two characters:

• Single quotes: Use \'
• Backslashes: Use \\

Examples:

# Searching for text with single quotes
'user\'s email address'
'can\'t connect to database'
'it\'s working'

# Searching for text with backslashes
'C:\\Program Files\\App'
'escape sequence: \\n'
'path\\to\\file'

# Combining both
'user\'s path: C:\\Users\\John'

Note: You don't need to escape other special characters like double quotes, brackets, or symbols when they're inside single quotes:

# These work without escaping
'error: "connection failed"'
'array[index] = value'
'status != 200'
'price: $99.99'

Regular Expressions

You can use any valid RE2 syntax as the full text search.

Examples

Match structured log entries:

'^\[SnapshotGenerator id=\d+\] Creating new KRaft snapshot file snapshot \d+-\d+ because .+ \d+ bytes\.$'

This matches log records with body like:

[SnapshotGenerator id=1] Creating new KRaft snapshot file snapshot 00000000000001109202-0000000001 because we have replayed at least 2800 bytes.
[SnapshotGenerator id=1] Creating new KRaft snapshot file snapshot 00000000000001109163-0000000001 because we have replayed at least 2800 bytes.
[SnapshotGenerator id=1] Creating new KRaft snapshot file snapshot 00000000000001109124-0000000001 because we have replayed at least 2800 bytes.
[SnapshotGenerator id=1] Creating new KRaft snapshot file snapshot 00000000000001108539-0000000001 because we have replayed at least 2800 bytes.
[SnapshotGenerator id=1] Creating new KRaft snapshot file snapshot 00000000000001108305-0000000001 because we have replayed at least 2800 bytes.

Match logs where the body contains email addresses:

'[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,}'

Combining Full-Text with Field Searches

You can combine full-text search (on log body) with field-based filtering:

'payment failed' AND service.name = 'payment-service'

This finds logs where the body contains "payment failed" AND the service name is 'payment-service'.

Important: When to Use Quotes

Always use quotes when:

1. Searching for exact phrases
2. Your search term contains special characters or operators
3. You want to search for operator keywords as text

Examples where quotes are necessary:

# Wrong - AND will be treated as boolean operator
searching for AND operator

# Correct - searches for the phrase including 'AND'
'searching for AND operator'

Best Practices

1. Use quotes for phrases - Always quote multi-word searches unless you want each word searched separately
2. Be specific - More specific searches perform better than broad ones
3. Combine with fields - Add field filters to narrow down results
4. Test regex patterns - Complex regex can be slow; test and optimize
5. Escape properly - Only escape single quotes and backslashes inside quoted strings