How to use PublishPlugin's regex filter setting?

The PublishPlugin offers a filter that seems very useful, but I need help to understand how to use it right:

Filter topic contents (regex)

A regular expression that will cause a topic to be excluded if the RE matches the topic content. Leave blank to include all topics.

I want to filter not by topic text, but by a certain DataForms field value: I've got a form named DocumentationForm which contains the field DocumentationStatus. I want to exclude pages with DocumentationStatus = DraftStatus.

How do I enter this as a regex filter? I have no experience with regex, but I'm willing to try!

I already have a search macro that correctly lists all my draft pages:

%SEARCH{ type="query" "DocumentationForm[name='DocumentationStatus'].value='DraftStatus'"

So I would expect that when I put this:

DocumentationForm[name='DocumentationStatus'].value='DraftStatus'

into the publishing form field, then these matches would be excluded, but they seem to be included.

So I still a little help getting this to work.

-- TorbenGB - 04 Oct 2010

I found that the regex filter apparently only looks for matches in the topic body, not in the topic metadata. Is this true?

I want to exclude those topics from publishing that have the meta field:

%META:FIELD{name="DocumentationStatus" attributes="M" title="DocumentationStatus" value="DraftStatus"}%

I don't know how to achieve that, except that I could copy the web in question, and delete all the draft topics, then start the publishing process in that copied-and-trimmed web. Ugly and tedious, but it would probably work...

-- TorbenGB - 04 Oct 2010

I still need an answer and my own experiments have not revealed more than what I've already written above. - 17 Nov 2010

Answer

I don't have an answer for your regex question, but to accomplish your task you should be able to use a negated form of your %SEARCH% in the topiclist parameter.

-- DiabJerius - 04 Apr 2011

Thank you very much for your answer; my question is still relevant to me so you've already helped me!

It's a good idea to use a %SEARCH in the topic list, I'll have to test it with a search for topics that have DocumentationStatus = FinalStatus. Some of my pages don't have any form, so I need to find a way to somehow include both "FinalStatus" and "no form" in the topic list.

Thanks!

-- TorbenGB - 04 Apr 2011

1. Only the text body of the topic is searched. regex searchs of embedded meta-data are not supported.
2. Use the standard %SEARCH{type="query" to build a list of topics you are interested in publishing, and feed that list to the PublishPlugin (in the topiclist parameter).

-- CrawfordCurrie - 03 Aug 2011

RE: Use the standard =%SEARCH= -- AHA! So that was the part I was missing. I should've tested that way too. Thank you Crawford!

-- TorbenGB - 03 Aug 2011