Filters

Aggregator makes it easy to filter your displays so they only show the items that meet your specified criteria, that is, have (or don’t have) certain properties. These filters can be as simple or as complex as you like.

Simple Filters

To filter your feed items on a per display basis:

1. Open a display and click on the Filtering tab.
2. Start by clicking on the Add new filter button to create a new filter.
3. In the first dropdown that appears, choose the property you’d like to filter by for each item in the display. You can choose between:
   • Title (applies to the title only)
   • Content (applies to the content only)
   • Title and Content (applies to the title and content)
4. Next, type in a value.
5. In the final dropdown, select between Show items or Hide items.
   • Show items will display items matching the criteria set.
   • Hide items will not display items matching the criteria set.
6. Click the Save button at the bottom to activate the filter.

Note: Filtering is based on exact matches. It doesn’t support fuzzy matching. For example, a filter with the term “weather” will look for an exact match for that word. Phrases such as “atmospheric conditions” might be related but are not caught by the filter.

Filters allow you to search for whole words to avoid partial matches, e.g., “arch” will match “architecture” and “arch-enemy” unless the whole words option is selected.

Complex Filters

You can create more complex filters by combining AND and OR logic. These are nested within a single filter.

AND logic means that all specified conditions must be met for an item to be shown or hidden.

For example, if you set a filter to show items that meet Condition A AND Condition B, only items meeting both criteria will pass through the filter.

On the other hand, OR logic means that meeting just one of the conditions is enough for an item to be shown or hidden.

For example, if you set a filter to show items that meet Condition A OR Condition B, an item meeting either one will be shown.

This internal logic helps you fine-tune what gets shown or hidden during the filtering process.

Combining Filters

Aggregator allows you to create and combine as many filters as you wish (both simple and complex).

When combining filters, Aggregator will automatically apply AND or OR between each filter depending on your selected action (show or hide).

To better understand this, let’s consider two consecutive filters:

• “Show” filter followed by another “Show” filter:
  Think of this as saying “Yes” twice. If either filter agrees to show an item, the item will be shown. This uses an OR logic, meaning the item gets shown if it meets any criteria from both filters.
  
• “Show” filter followed by a “Hide” filter:
  This is like saying “Yes, but…”. The first filter says yes, but the item must meet the conditions of the second “Do not import” filter to get shown. This uses an AND logic, refining the import process to hide certain items.
  
• “Hide” filter followed by another “Hide” filter:
  Imagine two gates that both say “No.” If an item matches any criteria from either filter, it will not be shown. This uses an OR logic, meaning any match leads to exclusion.
  
• (Not recommended) “Hide” filter followed by an “Show” filter:
  This is saying “No” first, and then checking again for a “Yes.” This is tricky because items might get excluded by the first filter and never have a chance to be reconsidered by the second. Using AND logic here can lead to missing out on valuable content.