Useful CQL statements to search what you need in Confluence

[#1]

CQL or Confluence Query Language is a powerful search language. It is a secret trick that only advanced Confluence users will know. 

Unlike its famous sibling JQL which is used in Jira advanced searching, CQL is not as well known and not well documented.

Here are some useful CQLs that you can use to search what exactly you need.

How to find a page by title within a specified space

space = SPACEKEY AND title ~ "meeting minutes"

This one helps to filter out a lot of noise especially when a lot of other pages also contains the same keyword

How to find an attachment by name

space = SPACEKEY AND type = Attachment AND title ~ "screenshot"

How to find a pdf attachment which the content contains a keyword (Confluence)

type = attachment AND title ~ "pdf" AND text ~ "confluence"

How to find a page containing a Confluence macro (e.g. CQL Navigation Macro)

type = Page AND macro = cqlnavigation

How to find a blog post that was created within the last month

space = SPACEKEY AND type = blogpost AND created > startOfMonth("-1M") AND created < startOfMonth()

How to find the comments you wrote over the past 1 week sorted by date posted

type = comment AND creator = currentUser() AND created > startOfDay("-1w") order by created desc

You can execute the CQL search by pasting it in the browser address bar in the format 

https://<confluence-base-url>/dosearchsite.action?cql=<CQL in the example below>.

Alternatively, it is possible to encode the CQL inside macros by Confluence apps such as Canned Search for Confluence so that users can use them directly without having to memorise the CQL syntax.

You can also find the guide to advance searching with CQL here. 

If you have any useful CQL statements to share, you are welcome to add on the list.

[Ulrich Kuhnhardt _IzymesCo_]

Thanks for sharing. Your article makes CQL more approachable.

[Roman]

How can we build a cql query to just search for a  term? E.g.: I  want to search for  "cold wallet"

but cql = "term ='cold wallet' " gives a 400 bad request invalid cql query

[Robert Klohr]

@Roman The syntax you need is:

https://your-domain.atlassian.net/wiki/rest/api/content/search?cql=text~"cold wallet"

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

@Hua Soon SIM _Akeles_ It is a great article illustrated with practical examples!

I agree CQL is very useful, although on Cloud, in our experience consistency is a problem. It may return contents it should not and not return contents it should after a mass-update on contents, and it may take a few minutes until reaches the state of consistency. In contrary, Jira and JQL work much better in this sense.

The other problem is that CQL is not available natively in the UI for some reason?! There are some macros, luckily, that support CQL and can be used to build report pages in Confluence. 

[Levente Szabo _Midori_]

Thanks, @Hua Soon SIM _Akeles_ for this list!

In a similar fashion, the team behind Better Content Archiving for Confluence Cloud published a broad list of CQL examples to help users define what they are searching for, like:

• Confluence page status
• Contents without an owner
• Expired content
• Contents without an expiration date

If you give Better Content Archiving a try for your automated content lifecycle needs (page status, notifications, and archiving/deletion) I'm sure you'll find it useful!

[Jenna Ingersoll]

I'm trying to return everything expect the latest blog post. Any ideas on the CQL? 

[Hua Soon SIM _Akeles_]

Hi  @Jenna Ingersoll ,

Can you elaborate what do you mean to return everything expect the latest blog post?