Content By Label - required labels and the AND OR operator

[Dave Hergert]

So there is some good discussion on the Content by Label documentation page, specifically around how the required labels and operators work. I am trying to understand the intended behavior because as far as I am seeing, its not behaving correctly (using 4.3 at the time of this post).

Please see the following scenarios and what I would expect based on the conversations on that page above. Note: I am assuming the order of labels does not affect anything.

Configuration: labels=aa,bb,+cc,-dd
Operator: OR (default)
Expected Logical Representation: (aa OR bb) AND cc AND NOT dd
Actual Behavior: aa OR bb AND cc AND NOT dd

Configuration: labels=aa,bb,+cc,-dd
Operator: AND
Expected Logical Representation: (aa AND bb) AND cc AND NOT dd

The problem I am seeing is in the first scenario, where I am getting results with pages that just have "cc". I would expect pages that have "cc", but also "aa" or "bb". I would want non-required labels to be grouped in parenthesis so the operator applies to just them. I'd expect this behavior because if we just had "aa,bb" it would only return items with 1 or more of those, not 0 or more (i.e. every page in your instance). Having a required-label shouldn't break that behavior.

[Dave Hergert · Accepted solution]

This question is not answered but I will close it to stop the automated emails asking me to close/answer it. I created an issue against the Confluence Content By Label macro.

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-29796

Check that for closure, and if it gets closed I will be sure to update this post with the info.

[Steffen Heller]

Hello,

I think I have the same topic as David.

My confluence pages have different labels A, B and C and I am looking for a solution that does the following:

• Show all the pages that include (A+B) or (A+B) or (A+B+C)
• Do not show pages that only include (A) or (B) or (C) or (B+C)

The Content by Lable macro has different combinators as described at https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONF43/Content+by+Label+Macro

But I can't find a combination that works:

• "labels=+A, B, C" also shows (A) alone with "Operator: OR" and shows only (A+B+C) with "Operator: AND"

Any other ideas?

[Sean King]

The expected logical representation for OR to my knowledge is based on your labels is:

Can have aa OR bb, must have cc, and can't have dd

For AND is would be:

Can have aa AND bb, must have cc, and can't have dd