Search

Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+F

Search objects in the current data layer. This tool have different look, depending on your expert setting:

Expert mode off:

Expert mode on:

You need to choose one of the search and select modes:

• replace selection
• add to selection
• remove from selection
• find in selection

If you check add toolbar button, as soon as you click on Start Search, a button will be added to the Main Toolbar which will execute the defined search expression each time, you press the button. You can also set an own icon for this button in the Toolbar Preferences. As with any "button" you can always assign shortcut to it.

Keywords

Expand based on https://josm.openstreetmap.de/browser/josm/trunk/src/org/openstreetmap/josm/actions/search/SearchCompiler.java; commit history and https://josm.openstreetmap.de/browser/josm/trunk/test/unit/org/openstreetmap/josm/actions/search/SearchCompilerTest.java

id
version
type
user
role
changeset
nodes
ways
tags
areasize
waylength
modified
selected
incomplete
untagged
closed
new
indownloadedarea
allindownloadedarea
inview
allinview
timestamp
nth
nth%
hasRole
parent
child

Examples

Some examples of queries:

• type:way selects all ways
• name:Herrengasse selects all elements with the given name
• name=Herrengasse same as above, but case sensitive
• "name"="Baker Street" same as above, but works also with special characters like white spaces in the value
• tag1=yes tag2=yes is equivalent to tag1=yes & tag2=yes
• type:way name:- selects all ways that do not have a name
• id:123465678 selects an object (way or node) with a particular id
• timestamp:2010-11-01/2010-12-01 selects object with last change in November 2010
• See also Help/Dialog/Filter#Examples

There is also a very under-used and under-documented feature that lets you enter a web URL (file://, http://, https://, ftp://) in the search field. JOSM will then attempt to load that URL, and select any objects that it finds referenced in that file. JOSM will look for XML tags "way", "node", and "relation" in the document, and use their id attribute. This means you can access another OSM file on your hard disk this way and have JOSM select all objects that are present in the file (provided they are present in JOSM's dataset too).

The special expressions selected and modified select all currently selected resp. all objects modified in the current session.

More examples are ​here

Some examples and search functions are only shown in expert mode. This includes the standard/regular expression/MapCSS selector radio button. When regular expression mode is selected any key or value field may be replaced with a regular expression enclosed in quotes.

See also

• Objects
• [Help/Dialog/Filter] allows you to save and combine multiple search patterns between your JOSM sessions
• JOSM supports Java Regex. For detailed Information see ​http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html
• mapcss selector syntax see Help/Styles/MapCSSImplementation

---

Back to Menu Edit
Back to Main Help