Search for odt files without indexing

Solution using a yad script

Overview

Unfortunately there's no existing GUI option that would be able to search through LibreOffice documents without creating an index first (e.g. Recoll, Tracker). The closest one I found was gnome-search-tool but it only supports plain text files.

Because I was looking for the same type of functionality a few months ago I decided to sit down and see what I could come up with myself. So, without further ado, here's the script I wrote:

ODT finder

#!/bin/bash

# NAME:           ODT finder
# AUTHOR:         (c) 2014 Glutanimate (https://github.com/Glutanimate)
# LICENSE:        GNU GPLv3 (http://www.gnu.de/documents/gpl-3.0.en.html)
# DEPENDENCIES    yad libreoffice unoconv


# Dialogs

Title="ODT finder"
TxtEntry="Please enter the <b>directory</b> you would like to search through \
and the <b>search term.</b>"
ErrNoArgs="ERROR: Please make sure to supply both a search path and search term"
ErrNoReslt="No results found."

# Variables

declare -A Results

# Functions

dialog_options(){
    SearchOptions="$(yad --form --title="$Title" --text="$TxtEntry" \
    --width=400 --height=200 --center \
    --field="Directory":DIR \
    --field="Search term" )"

    RET="$?"

    if [[ "$RET" != "0" ]]; then
      echo "Aborting"
      exit 1
    fi   
    
    SearchPath="$(echo "$SearchOptions" | cut -d '|' -f1)"
    SearchTerm="$(echo "$SearchOptions" | cut -d '|' -f2)"
    
    echo "Path: $SearchPath"
    echo "Query: $SearchTerm"
    
    if [[ -z "$SearchPath" || -z "$SearchTerm" ]]; then
      dialog_error "$ErrNoArgs"
      dialog_options
    fi
}


odt_search(){
    while IFS= read -r -d '' File; do
        Match="$(unoconv --format txt --stdout "$File" 2> /dev/null  | grep -m "1" -i "$SearchTerm")"
        if [[ -n "$Match" ]]
          then
              echo "Match found for $File:"
              echo "$Match"
              Results["$File"]="$Match"
          else
              echo "No Result found in $File"
        fi
    done < <(find "$SearchPath" -type f -name '*.odt' -print0)
    echo "1" > "$SearchState"
}

dialog_error(){
    yad --title="$Title" \
      --center --width="400" --height="100" \
      --image=dialog-error \
      --window-icon=dialog-error \
      --class="$WMCLASS" \
      --text="$1" \
      --button="OK":0 2> /dev/null
}



dialog_progress(){
    sleep 0.5
    while true; do
      if [[ "$(cat "$SearchState")" = "1" ]]; then
        break
      else
        echo "#Searching..."
        sleep 0.5
      fi
    done | \
    yad --progress --pulsate --auto-close \
    --width=350 --height=100 \
    --title="$Title" \
    --text="Searching for '<b>$SearchTerm</b>' in '<b>$SearchPath</b>' ..." \
    --button='_Cancel!gtk-cancel!':1 \
    2> /dev/null
    PROG_RET="$?"
    if [[ "$PROG_RET" != "0" ]]
      then
          kill -s TERM "$TOP_PID"
    fi
}

dialog_results(){
    TxtMain="Search results for '<b>$SearchTerm</b>' in '<b>$SearchPath</b>'"

    if [[ -z "${Results[@]}" ]]; then
      dialog_error "$ErrNoReslt"
      exit 1
    fi

    for File in "${!Results[@]}"; do
      echo "$File"
      echo "Ubuntu Mono 12"
      echo "\"[...]${Results[$File]}[...]\""
    done | \
    yad --list --listen --print-column=1 \
    --expand−column=0 \
    --title="$Title" \
    --text="$TxtMain" \
    --ellipsize=NONE \
    --width=800 --height=600 --center \
    --dclick-action="bash -c \"open_result %s\" &" \
    --column="File":TEXT --column=@font@ --column="Result":TEXT
}

open_result(){
    xdg-open "$1"
}

# Prep

TOP_PID="$$"

SearchState="$(mktemp -u --tmpdir "${0##*/}.XXXXX")"
echo "0" > "$SearchState"

export -f open_result

# Cleanup

trap "echo "1" > "$SearchState"; sleep 1; [[ -f "$SearchState" ]] && rm -r "$SearchState"; exit" EXIT

# Main

dialog_options
dialog_progress&
odt_search
dialog_results

Dependencies

ODT finder uses unoconv to convert LO documents to plain text. The GUI is based on yad, a powerful Zenity fork. Yad isn't available in the official repositories, yet, but you can install it from a webupd8 PPA.

The following commands should take care of all dependencies:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/y-ppa-manager
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unoconv yad

Installation

Copy and paste the contents of the code box above into a new text file, name it whatever you want and make it executable. You can integrate the script with your system in various ways, e.g. by assigning a launcher or using it as a Nautilus script.

Usage

First time launching the script you will be greeted with an entry dialog for the folder you want to search through and the search term:

Click on 'OK' to start the query. This might take a while:

When the result window pops up you can double-click on any of the entries to open it in your default viewer (LibreOffice, generally). You can do this for more than one file:

The script will exit after hitting OK, Cancel, or closing the window.

There are some basic checks to guide the user and warn them if something went wrong:

Hopefully this fits the bill ☺.