How can I do advanced partial match search?

BE HELPED 💬
1

I try to validate some prices through Open Prices and sometimes it is impossible to recognize all digits on some price, but I see other product details and part of barcode to try to find full barcode through OFF DB.

For instance this one:

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I definitely can recognize, that it has 13 digits and starts with 344 and ends with 30/35/36/39. Also I see product name, but the problem with it, that in many cases product names on prices/receipts are different from names that are stored in OFF database, so often they are useless.

My question how can I do search on https://world.openfoodfacts.org/ with next filters:

  • Only products with barcodes that include 13 digits.
  • Starts with 344
  • Perhaps ends with 30 or 35 or 36 or 39
  • Has 0,2kg
2

It’s definitely something that will be possible with our new search engine, search-a-licious.
We also implemented in the backend a feature to find barcodes that are similar to the detected one in the OFF database (using a similarity metric), but the web interface has not been added yet!

1 Like
3

Thanks! So for now the answer is ‘no’, but it will be possible in some future, right?

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4

Hey,

The future Open Food Facts search will allow partial barcode search (such as 3419390407**5), but I believe it’s not ready yet.

In the meantime, for these kinds of product, I found some success using a barcode scanner app, such as Scandit or the Open Food Facts one. The numbers might not be readable, but the bars often are.

Using your picture, both apps identified the product to be 3419390407035.

We’re also working on some suggestion mechanism on Open Prices, the idea would be to suggest to users a few products with barcodes close to the one detected. This would help when a only few numbers are unreadable.

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5

I didn’t think about that option. Thanks!