User Guide

24 Chapter 2: Working with Filters
Filter reference
Filters are comprised of a type (either filter or sort) with an optional modifier, the name of the
field, if needed, and finally, the value of the field name, as shown in the following example:
Type-Modifier-FieldName=Value
The following table lists all the filter types and modifiers you can use with Breeze:
Testing code in the browser
You can enter a test URL in the address field of a browser window and see the XML response
from the server. It is a good idea to become comfortable with filters in the browser before you
write code.
There are many nuances to filters that determine which types of filters you can use with certain
API calls. The browser approach lets you quickly try combinations to see what works and what
doesn’t. If you try this outside the browser, you add the extra time of compiling, loading the result
in your application server, and debugging to see if a filter works as you expect. Using a browser,
on the other hand, is much faster and gives you immediate feedback.
For example, you could use the following URL and filter to find all courses with the word “filter”
in the name and the word “date” in the course description. This example URL uses
breezedev.mycompany.com as the server name and myf1rst@pp^ for the API access key. Make
sure you log on to the server first, and then enter the following URL, substituting your server
name for
breezedev.mycompany.com and your API access key for myf1rst@pp^:
http://breezedev.mycompany.com/api/xml?accesskey= myf1rst@pp^&action=report-
my-courses&filter-like-name=filter&filter-like-description=date
Type Modifier Description
filter (none)
Field must match value exactly.
filter like
Field must contain value.
filter out
Field cannot contain value.
filter rows
Limits the return result to number of rows specified in value. Does not use the
field name.
filter start
Limits the return result to number of rows specified in value. Does not use the
field name.
filter gt
Selects all items greater than the value. Works only with dates.
filter lt
Selects all items greater than the value. Works only with dates.
filter gte
Selects all items greater than or equal to the value. Works only with dates.
filter lte
Selects all items less than or equal to the value. Works only with dates.
sort (none)
Sorts results. Value must be asc or desc.