# SoSearchAction Class Reference
[Actions]

`#include <Inventor/actions/SoSearchAction.h>`

Inheritance diagram for SoSearchAction:

List of all members.

## Detailed Description

The SoSearchAction class provides methods for searching through scene graphs.

Nodes can be searched for by pointer, type, and name, or a combination of those criteria. Types can be interpreted as exact types, or the type can match nodes derived from it. Every single node can be searched, or normal traversal rules can be followed when searching (this is especially important to note with regard to switch nodes).

When using more than one of the setNode(), setType() and setName() calls, note that the action will search for node(s) with an `"AND"` combination of the given search criteria.

Be aware that if you do search operations on an SoSearchAction created on the stack, you can get some unfortunate side effects if you're not careful. Since SoSearchAction keeps a list of the path(s) found in the latest search, the nodes in these paths will be unref'ed when the SoSearchAction stack instance is destructed at the end of your function. If the root of your scene-graph then has ref-count zero (it is often useful to do a unrefNoDelete() before returning a node from a function to leave the referencing to the caller), the root node will be destructed! It might be better to create a heap instance of the search action in those cases, since you'll then be able to destruct the search action before calling unrefNoDelete(). Another solution would be to call reset() before calling unrefNoDelete() on your object, since reset() truncates the path list.

See the documentation of SoTexture2 for a full usage example of SoSearchAction.

## Public Types

enum | LookFor { NODE = 1, TYPE = 2, NAME = 4 }
enum | Interest { FIRST, LAST, ALL }

## Public Member Functions

| SoSearchAction (void)
virtual | ~SoSearchAction ()
void | setNode (SoNode *const node)
SoNode * | getNode (void) const
void | setType (const SoType type, const SbBool chkderived=TRUE)
SoType | getType (SbBool &chkderived) const
void | setName (const SbName name)
SbName | getName (void) const
void | setFind (const int what)
int | getFind (void) const
void | setInterest (const Interest interest)
Interest | getInterest (void) const
void | setSearchingAll (const SbBool searchall)
SbBool | isSearchingAll (void) const
SoPath * | getPath (void) const
SoPathList & | getPaths (void)
void | reset (void)
void | setFound (void)
SbBool | isFound (void) const
void | addPath (SoPath *const path)

## Static Public Member Functions

void | initClass (void)

## Static Public Attributes

SbBool | duringSearchAll = FALSE

## Protected Member Functions

virtual void | beginTraversal (SoNode *node)

## Member Enumeration Documentation

enum SoSearchAction::LookFor

| Specify the search criterion. This can be a bitwise combination of the available values.

enum SoSearchAction::Interest

| Values used when specifiying what node(s) we are interested in: the first one found, the last one or all of them.

## Constructor & Destructor Documentation

SoSearchAction::SoSearchAction | ( | void |  | ) |

| Initializes internal settings with default values. With the default settings, the SoSearchAction will ignore all nodes.

SoSearchAction::~SoSearchAction | ( |  | ) | `[virtual]`

| Destructor.

## Member Function Documentation

void SoSearchAction::initClass | ( | void |  | ) | `[static]`

| Initializes the run-time type system for this class, and sets up the enabled elements and action method list. Reimplemented from SoAction.

void SoSearchAction::setNode | ( | SoNode *const | node | ) |

| Sets the node pointer to search for. The action will be configured to set the search "interest" to LookFor `NODE`, so there is no need to call SoSearchAction::setFind().

SoNode * SoSearchAction::getNode | ( | void |  | ) | const

| Returns the node the SoSearchAction instance is configured to search for. Note that this method does not return what was found when you applied the action - it only returns what was specifically set by the user with setNode(). What the action found is returned by getPath() and getPaths().

void SoSearchAction::setType | ( | const SoType | type,
|  | const SbBool | chkderived = TRUE
| ) |

| Configures the SoSearchAction instance to search for nodes of the given type, and nodes of classes derived from the given type if chkderived is `TRUE`. The action will be configured to set the search "interest" to LookFor `TYPE`, so there is no need to call SoSearchAction::setFind().

SoType SoSearchAction::getType | ( | SbBool & | chkderived | ) | const

| Returns the node type which is searched for, and whether derived classes of that type also returns a match.

void SoSearchAction::setName | ( | const SbName | name | ) |

| Configures the SoSearchAction instance to search for nodes with the given name. The action will be configured to set the search "interest" to LookFor `NAME`, so there is no need to call SoSearchAction::setFind().

SbName SoSearchAction::getName | ( | void |  | ) | const

| Returns the name the SoSearchAction instance is configured to search for.

void SoSearchAction::setFind | ( | const int | what | ) |

| Configures what to search for in the scene graph. what is a bitmask of LookFor flags. Default find configuration is to ignore all nodes, but the setFind() configuration is updated automatically when any one of SoSearchAction::setNode(), SoSearchAction::setType() or SoSearchAction::setName() is called.

int SoSearchAction::getFind | ( | void |  | ) | const

| Returns the search configuration of the action instance.

void SoSearchAction::setInterest | ( | const Interest | interest | ) |

| Configures whether only the first, the last, or all the searching matches are of interest. Default configuration is `FIRST`.

SoSearchAction::Interest SoSearchAction::getInterest | ( | void |  | ) | const

| Returns whether only the first, the last, or all the searching matches will be saved.

void SoSearchAction::setSearchingAll | ( | const SbBool | searchall | ) |

| Specifies whether normal graph traversal should be done (searchall is `FALSE`, which is the default setting), or if every single node should be searched (searchall is `TRUE`). If the searchall flag is `TRUE`, even nodes considered "hidden" by other actions are searched (like for instance the disabled children of SoSwitch nodes).

SbBool SoSearchAction::isSearchingAll | ( | void |  | ) | const

| Returns the traversal method configuration of the action.

SoPath * SoSearchAction::getPath | ( | void |  | ) | const

Returns the path to the node of interest that matched the search criterions. If no match was found, `NULL` is returned.

Note that if `ALL` matches are of interest, the result of a search action must be fetched through SoSearchAction::getPaths().

There is one frequently asked question about the paths that are returned from either this method or the getPaths() method below: "why am I not getting the complete path as expected?"

Well, then you probably have to cast the path to a SoFullPath, since certain nodes (nodekits, many VRML97 nodes) have hidden children. SoPath::getTail() will return the first node that has hidden children, or the tail if none of the nodes have hidden children. SoFullPath::getTail() will always return the actual tail. Just do like this:

        SoFullPath * path = (SoFullPath *) searchaction->getPath();
        SoVRMLCoordinate * vrmlcord = (SoVRMLCoordinate *) path->getTail();

SoPathList & SoSearchAction::getPaths | ( | void |  | ) |

Returns a pathlist of all nodes that matched the search criterions.

Note that if interest were only `FIRST` or `LAST`, SoSearchAction::getPath() should be used instead of this method.

See also:
  getPath()

void SoSearchAction::reset | ( | void |  | ) |

| Resets all the SoSearchAction internals back to their default values.

void SoSearchAction::setFound | ( | void |  | ) |

| This API member is considered internal to the library, as it is not likely to be of interest to the application programmer. Marks the SoSearchAction instance as terminated.

SbBool SoSearchAction::isFound | ( | void |  | ) | const

| This API member is considered internal to the library, as it is not likely to be of interest to the application programmer. Returns whether the search action was terminated. Note that this value does not reflect whether the node(s) that was searched for was found or not.

void SoSearchAction::addPath | ( | SoPath *const | path | ) |

| This API member is considered internal to the library, as it is not likely to be of interest to the application programmer. Sets the path, or adds the path to the path list, depending on the interest configuration. The path is not copied, so it can not be modified after being added without side effects.

void SoSearchAction::beginTraversal | ( | SoNode * | node | ) | `[protected, virtual]`

This virtual method is called from SoAction::apply(), and is the entry point for the actual scenegraph traversal.

It can be overridden to initialize the action at traversal start, for specific initializations in the action subclasses inheriting SoAction.

Default method just calls traverse(), which any overridden implementation of the method must do too (or call SoAction::beginTraversal()) to trigger the scenegraph traversal.

Reimplemented from SoAction.

## Member Data Documentation

SbBool SoSearchAction::duringSearchAll = FALSE`[static]`

Obsoleted global flag, only present for compatibility reasons with old SGI / TGS Inventor application code.

It's set to `TRUE` when an SoSearchAction traversal with SoSearchAction::isSearchingAll() equal to `TRUE` is started, and is reset to `FALSE` again after traversal has finished.

(The flag is used by SGI / TGS Inventor in SoSwitch::affectsState() to know when SoSwitch::whichChild should behave as SoSwitch::SO_SWITCH_ALL. We have a better solution for this problem in Coin.)

The documentation for this class was generated from the following files:

- SoSearchAction.h
- SoSearchAction.cpp