Search bar

[eimrek]

Add a search bar that allows for more powerful ways to search for materials.

E.g. one use case we had was to find all structures that have a 3d transition metal, which is not so easy with current interface.

[Bud-Macaulay]

-- Mostly leaving this note to remind myself that I have worked on this.

I had a tinker with this as an idea and thought a dynamic search bar that updates as elements are clicked in the pt would be nice and act as a way for the user to learn search syntax however
the current dynamic PT will not play nicely with advanced searches.

i.e It's unclear what to color what if the user supplies complex set logic (imagine the following searches)

• O and (Li or Na) and (Co or Mn or Ni) -- could be handled with assigned colors to groups but may get messy
• Li and not group1 -- how to handle a contradiction in logic (this is not an easy/cheap task)
• (pblock and dblock) or (O and Ca) -- how to color elements that are asked for in different sets?

I think advanced search may be better served as independant feature (maybe in a new page or as a popup on click)

I have built a fairly light and easy to modify (add definitions to a PT library and the string-key mapping to a predicates dict) string parser that tokenised human text and passes it to a AST / logic solver.

GH code: https://github.com/Bud-Macaulay/element-query
Live demo page: https://bud-macaulay.github.io/element-query/