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.

Description Default Query

Changes > Open

status:open '(or is:open)'

Changes > Merged

status:merged

Changes > Abandoned

status:abandoned

Your > Watched Changes

is:watched is:open

Your > Starred Changes

is:starred

Your > Draft Comments

has:draft

Your > Edits

has:edit

Your > All Visible Changes

is:visible

Open changes in Foo

status:open project:Foo

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

Description Examples

Change Id

15183

Full or abbreviated Change-Id

Ic0ff33

Full or abbreviated commit SHA-1

d81b32ef

Email address

user@example.com

For change searches (i.e. those using a change number, Change-Id, or commit SHA-1), if the search results in a single change that change will be presented instead of a list.

For more predictable results, use explicit search operators as described in the following section.

Important

The change search API is backed by a secondary index and might sometimes return stale results if the re-indexing operation failed for a change update.

Please also note that changes are not re-indexed if the project configuration is updated with newly added or modified submit requirements.

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.

Characters in operator values can be escaped by enclosing the value with double quotes and escaping characters with a backslash. For example message:"This \"is\" fixing a bug".

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)

age can be used both forward and backward looking: age:2d means 'everything older than 2 days' while -age:2d means 'everything with an age of at most 2 days'.

attention:'USER'

Changes whose attention set includes the given user.

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.

mergedbefore:'TIME'

Changes merged before the given 'TIME'. The matching behaviour is consistent with before:'TIME'.

mergedafter:'TIME'

Changes merged after the given 'TIME'. The matching behaviour is consistent with after:'TIME'.

change:'ID'

Either a change number such as 15183, or a Change-Id from the Change-Id footer.

conflicts:'ID'

Changes that conflict with change 'ID'. Change 'ID' can be specified as a change number such as 15183, or a Change-Id from the Change-Id footer.

destination:'[name=]NAME[,user=USER|,group=GROUP]'

Changes which match the specified USER’s or GROUP’s destination named 'NAME'. If 'USER' is unspecified, the current user is used. The named destinations can be publicly accessible by other users. The value may be wrapped in double quotes to include spaces. For example, destination:"myreviews,group=My Group" (see Named Destinations).

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'.

uploader:'USER'

Changes where the latest patch set was uploaded by 'USER'. The special case of uploader:self will find changes uploaded by the caller.

uploaderin:'GROUP'

Changes where the latest patch set was uploaded by a user in 'GROUP'.

query:'[name=]NAME[,user=USER|,group=GROUP]'

Changes which match the specified USER’s or GROUP’s query named 'NAME'. If neither 'USER' nor 'GROUP' is specified, the current user is used. The named queries can be publicly accessible by other users. The value may be wrapped in double quotes to include spaces. For example, query:"myquery,group=My Group" (see Named Queries).

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.

cc:'USER'

Changes that have the given user CC’ed on them. The special case of cc:self will find changes where the caller has been CC’ed.

revertof:'ID'

Changes that revert the change specified by the change number.

submissionid:'ID'

Changes that have the specified submission 'ID'.

reviewerin:'GROUP'

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

commit:'SHA-1'

Changes where 'SHA-1' 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'.

parentof:'ID'

Changes which are parent to the change specified by 'ID'. Change 'ID' can be specified as a change number such as 15183, or a Change-Id from the 'Change-Id' footer of the commit message. This operator will return immediate parents and will not return grand parents or higher level ancestors of the given change.

parentproject:'PROJECT'

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

repository:'REPOSITORY', repo:'REPOSITORY'

Changes occurring in 'REPOSITORY'. If 'REPOSITORY' starts with ^ it matches repository names by regular expression. The dk.brics.automaton library is used for evaluation of such patterns.

repositories:'PREFIX', repos:'PREFIX'

Changes occurring in repositories starting with 'PREFIX'.

parentrepository:'REPOSITORY', parentrepo:'REPOSITORY'

Changes occurring in 'REPOSITORY' or in one of the child repositories of 'REPOSITORY'.

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.

intopic:'TOPIC'

Changes whose designated topic contains 'TOPIC', using a full-text search.

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

topic:'TOPIC'

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

prefixtopic:'TOPIC'

Changes whose designated topic start with 'TOPIC'.

inhashtag:'HASHTAG'

Changes where any hashtag contains 'HASHTAG', using a full-text search.

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

hashtag:'HASHTAG'

Changes whose hashtag matches 'HASHTAG'. The match is case-insensitive.

prefixhashtag:'HASHTAG'

Changes whose hashtag start with 'HASHTAG'. The match is case-insensitive.

cherrypickof:'CHANGE[,PATCHSET]'

Changes which were created using the 'cherry-pick' functionality and whose source change number matches 'CHANGE' and source patchset number matches 'PATCHSET'. Note that 'PATCHSET' is optional. For example, a cherrypickof:12345 matches all changes which were cherry-picked from change 12345 and cherrypickof:12345,2 matches all changes which were cherry-picked from the 2nd patchset of change 12345.

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'::, m:'MESSAGE'::, description:'MESSAGE'::, d:'MESSAGE'

Changes that match 'MESSAGE' arbitrary string in the commit message body. By default full text matching is used, but regular expressions can be enabled by starting with ^. The dk.brics.automaton library is used for the evaluation of such patterns. Note, that searching with regular expressions is limited to the first 32766 bytes of the commit message due to limitations in Lucene.

subject:'SUBJECT'

Changes that have a commit message where the first line (aka the subject) matches 'SUBJECT'. The matching is done by full text search over the subject.

prefixsubject:'PREFIX'

Changes that have a commit message where the first line (aka the subject) has the prefix 'PREFIX'.

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.

Note that the Gerrit host may not support regular expression search. You will then see an error dialog when using expressions starting with ^.

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, can be double quoted. For example, to match all XML files named like 'name1.xml', 'name2.xml', and 'name3.xml' use file:"^name[1-3].xml".

Slash ('/') is used path separator.

More examples:

  • -path:^path/.* - changes that do not modify files from path/.

  • path:{^~(path/.*)} - changes that modify files not from path/ (but may contain files from path/).

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).

extension:'EXT', ext:'EXT'

Matches any change touching a file with extension 'EXT', case-insensitive. The extension is defined as the portion of the filename following the final .. Files with no . in their name have no extension and can be matched by an empty string.

onlyextensions:'EXT_LIST', onlyexts:'EXT_LIST'

Matches any change touching only files with extensions that are listed in 'EXT_LIST' (comma-separated list). The matching is done case-insensitive. An extension is defined as the portion of the filename following the final .. Files with no . in their name have no extension and can be matched by an empty string.

directory:'DIR', dir:'DIR'

Matches any change where the current patch set touches a file in the directory 'DIR'. The matching is done case-insensitive. 'DIR' can be a full directory name, a directory prefix or any combination of intermediate directory segments. E.g. a change that touches a file in the directory 'a/b/c' matches for 'a/b/c', 'a', 'a/b', 'b', 'b/c' and 'c'.

Slash ('/') is used path separator. Leading and trailing slashes are allowed but are not mandatory.

If 'DIR' starts with ^ it matches directories and directory segments by regular expression. The dk.brics.automaton library is used for evaluation of such patterns.

hasfooter:'FOOTERNAME'

Matches any change that has a commit message with a footer where the footer name is equal to 'FOOTERNAME'.The matching is done case-sensitive.

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 with the default label.

has:edit

True if the change has inline edit created by the current user.

has:unresolved

True if the change has unresolved comments.

has:attention

True if the change has attention by the current user.

is:starred

Same as 'has:star', true if the change has been starred by the current user with the default label.

is:attention

True if the change has attention 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 any user has commented on the change more recently than the last update (comment or patch set) from the change owner.

is:owner

True on any change where the current user is the change owner. Same as owner:self.

is:uploader

True on any change where the current user is the uploader of the latest patch set. Same as uploader:self.

is:reviewer

True on any change where the current user is a reviewer. Same as reviewer:self.

is:cc

True on any change where the current user is in CC. Same as cc:self.

is:open, is:pending, is:new

True if the change is open.

is:closed

True if the change is either merged or abandoned.

is:merged, is:abandoned

Same as status:'STATE'.

is:submittable

True if the change is submittable according to the submit rules for the project, for example if all necessary labels have been voted on.

This operator only takes into account one change at a time, not any related changes, and does not guarantee that the submit button will appear for matching changes. To check whether a submit button appears, use the Get Revision Actions API.

is:mergeable

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

Mergeability of abandoned changes is not computed. This operator will not find any abandoned but mergeable changes.

This operator only works if Gerrit indexes 'mergeable'. See change.mergeabilityComputationBehavior for details.

is:private

True if the change is private, ie. only visible to owner and its reviewers.

is:wip

True if the change is Work In Progress.

is:merge

True if the change is a merge commit.

is:cherrypick

True if the change is a cherrypick of an another change.

This is limited to changes which are cherrypicked using REST API or WebUI only. It is not able to identify changes which are cherry-picked locally using the git cherry-pick command and then pushed to Gerrit.

is:pure-revert

True if the change is a pure revert.

status:open, status:pending, status:new

True if the change state is 'review in progress'.

status:reviewed

Same as 'is:reviewed', matches if any user has commented on the change more recently than the last update (comment or patch set) from the change owner.

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.

commentby:'USER'

Changes containing a top-level or inline comment by 'USER'. The special case of commentby:self will find changes where the caller has commented. Note that setting a vote is also considered as a comment.

from:'USER'

Changes containing a top-level or inline comment by 'USER', or owned by 'USER'. Equivalent to (owner:USER OR commentby:USER).

reviewedby:'USER'

Changes where 'USER' has commented on the change more recently than the last update (comment or patch set) from the change owner.

author:'AUTHOR', a:'AUTHOR'

Changes where 'AUTHOR' is the author of the current patch set. 'AUTHOR' may be the author’s exact email address, or part of the name or email address. The special case of author:self will find changes authored by the caller.

committer:'COMMITTER'

Changes where 'COMMITTER' is the committer of the current patch set. 'COMMITTER' may be the committer’s exact email address, or part of the name or email address. The special case of committer:self will find changes committed by the caller.

rule:'SUBMIT_RULE_NAME'

Changes where 'SUBMIT_RULE_NAME' returns a submit record with status in {OK, FORCED}. This means that the submit rule has passed and is not blocking the change submission. 'SUBMIT_RULE_NAME' should be in the form of '$plugin_name~$rule_name'. For gerrit core rules, 'SUBMIT_RULE_NAME' should be in the form of 'gerrit~$rule_name' (example: gerrit~DefaultSubmitRule).

rule:'SUBMIT_RULE_NAME'='STATUS'

Changes where 'SUBMIT_RULE_NAME' returns a submit record with status equals to 'STATUS'. The status can be any of the statuses that are documented for the status field of SubmitRecord.

unresolved:'RELATION''NUMBER'

True if the number of unresolved comments satisfies the given relation for the given number.

For example, unresolved:>0 will be true for any change which has at least one unresolved comment while unresolved:0 will be true for any change which has all comments resolved.

Valid relations are >=, >, <=, <, or no relation, which will match if the number of unresolved comments 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) or not (all lower case) is a synonym.

AND

The boolean operator AND (in all caps) or and (all lower case) 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) or or (all lower case) 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 either a score with optional operator, or a label status. The easiest way to explain this is by example.

First, some examples of scores with operators:

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.

Instead of a numeric vote, you can provide a label status corresponding to one of the fields in the SubmitRecord REST API entity.

label:Code-Review<=-1

Matches changes with either a -1, -2, or any lower score.

label:Code-Review=MAX

Matches changes with label voted with the highest possible score.

label:Code-Review=MIN

Matches changes with label voted with the lowest possible score.

label:Code-Review=ANY

Matches changes with label voted with any score.

label:Code-Review=+1,count=2

Matches changes with exactly two +1 votes to the code-review label. The {MAX, MIN, ANY} votes can also be used, for example label:Code-Review=MAX,count=2 is equivalent to label:Code-Review=2,count=2 (if 2 is the maximum positive vote for the code review label). The maximum supported value for count is 5. count=0 is not allowed and the query request will fail with 400 Bad Request.

label:Code-Review=+1,count>=2

Matches changes having two or more +1 votes to the code-review label. Can also be used with the {MAX, MIN, ANY} label votes. All operators >, >=, <, are supported. Note that a query like label:Code-Review=+1,count<x will not match with changes having zero +1 votes to this label.

label:Non-Author-Code-Review=need (deprecated)

Matches changes where the submit rules indicate that a label named Non-Author-Code-Review is needed. (See the Prolog Cookbook for how this label can be configured.)

This operator is also compatible with submit requirement results. A submit requirement name could be used instead of the label name. The submit record statuses are mapped to submit requirement result statuses as follows:

  • {need, reject} → {UNSATISFED}

  • {ok, may} → {SATISFIED, OVERRIDDEN}

For example, a query like label:Code-Review=ok will also match changes having a submit requirement with a result that is either SATISFIED or OVERRIDDEN. Users are encouraged not to rely on this operator since submit records are deprecated.

label:Code-Review=+2,aname
label:Code-Review=ok,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=+2,user=owner
label:Code-Review=ok,user=owner
label:Code-Review=+2,owner
label:Code-Review=ok,owner

The special "owner" parameter corresponds to the change owner. Matches all changes that have a +2 vote from the change owner.

label:Code-Review=+2,user=non_uploader
label:Code-Review=ok,user=non_uploader
label:Code-Review=+2,non_uploader
label:Code-Review=ok,non_uploader

The special "non_uploader" parameter corresponds to any user who’s not the uploader of the latest patchset. Matches all changes that have a +2 vote from a non upoader.

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.

is:open label:Code-Review+2 label:Verified+1 NOT label:Verified-1 NOT label:Code-Review-2
is:open label:Code-Review=ok label:Verified=ok

Matches changes that are ready to be submitted according to one common label configuration. (For a more general check, use is:submittable.)

is:open (label:Verified-1 OR label:Code-Review-2)
is:open (label:Verified=reject OR label:Code-Review=reject)

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.

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.