How to: Search for files with Thunar

July 12, 2006 at 9:39 am | Posted in scripts, tips and tricks, xubuntu | 14 Comments

At long last! Using this, you can right-click anywhere on Thunar and search for files. You can also run it by itself (by running bash ~/.bash-scripts/search-for-files).

1) Open up the terminal (Xfce menu > System > Terminal). First, we make a place for the script to stay. Then, we edit the script:

mkdir ~/.bash-scripts
mousepad ~/.bash-scripts/search-for-files

2) Paste the following into the file, and save it. (You can change the options at the top if you wish.)

#!/bin/bash
#search-for-files

# change this figure to suit yourself - I find zenity dies from about 1000 results but YMMV
maxresults=500

# again, change the path to the icon to suit yourself. But who doesn't like tango?
window_icon="/usr/share/icons/Tango/scalable/actions/search.svg"

# this script will work for any environment that has bash and zenity, so the filemanager is entirely down to you! you can add extra arguments to the string as long as the last argument is the path of the folder you open
filemanager="thunar"

window_title="Search for Files"

srcPath="$*"

if ! [ -d "$srcPath" ] ; then
cd ~/
srcPath=`zenity --file-selection --directory --title="$window_title - Look in folder" --window-icon="$window_icon"`
fi

if [ -d "$srcPath" ] ; then

fragment=`zenity --entry --title="$window_title - Name contains:" --window-icon="$window_icon" --text="Search strings less than 2 characters are ignored"`
if ! [ ${#fragment} -lt 2 ] ; then

(

echo 10
O=$IFS IFS=$'\n' files=( `find "$srcPath" -iname "*$fragment*" -printf \"%Y\"\ \"%f\"\ \"%k\ KB\"\ \"%t\"\ \"%h\"\\\n | head -n $maxresults` ) IFS=$O
echo 100

selected=`eval zenity --list --title=\"${#files[@]} Files Found - $window_title\" --window-icon="$window_icon" --width="600" --height="400" --text=\"Search results:\" --print-column=5 --column \"Type\" --column \"Name\" --column \"Size\" --column \"Date modified\" --column \"Path\" ${files[@]}`
if [ -e "$selected" ] ; then "$filemanager" "$selected" ; fi

) | zenity --progress --auto-close --pulsate --title="Searching..." --window-icon="$window_icon" --text="Searching for \"$fragment\""

fi

fi

exit

3) Make it so that Thunar is able to run the script:

chmod a+x ~/.bash-scripts/search-for-files

4) You need to put this script within Thunar’s right-click menu. Paste the following code into the terminal in order to backup the menu config and edit the current one.

cp ~/.config/Thunar/uca.xml ~/.config/Thunar/uca.xml.old ; mousepad ~/.config/Thunar/uca.xml

5) Scroll to the end of the file. Before where it says , paste in the following:

<action><icon>/usr/share/icons/Tango/scalable/actions/search.svg</icon><name>Search for Files</name><command>bash ~/.bash-scripts/search-for-files %f</command><description>Search this folder for files</description><patterns>*</patterns><directories/></action>

Save and exit.

6) To use it, open up Thunar, right click, and click on Search for Files. Type in a filename to search, and click Ok. A list of files will show up; clicking on one of them will show the directory the file is found in.

(Credit goes to lapsey at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=214059)