msglist: Offer search narrows

[gnprice]

This is a bit more complex than other narrows (#72, #250, #251) for a couple of reasons:

• It calls for some UI of its own, for the user to enter the search they want.
• The messages themselves should have a bit more data, to highlight the text within them that matched the query. This comes from the server as match_content and match_subject fields on the message objects; see https://zulip.com/api/get-messages .

For a first version, the search UI can be at the same level as in zulip-mobile, which means fairly crude: it doesn't support anything more than a text search. Ideally we'd support the richer range of searches that Zulip supports in general, complete with UI for the various kinds of filters, but that can be a followup issue.

The UI also calls for some care with concurrency and asynchronicity. See zulip-mobile's implementation.

[chrisbobbe]

Probably as a followup, we should make it easy to search shared history in addition to searching personal history. The zulip-flutter equivalent of zulip/zulip-mobile#5732.

[gnprice]

A user writes last week:

I don't use search that often, and mostly on Desktop, but when I do use it I really do need it. So I really wish it will continue to be available in the future, even if it's not working perfectly.

[chrisbobbe]

From a review in the Google Play Console:

It is nice, but the absence of a search bar (at least to search for topics) makes it frustrating to use.

[chrisbobbe]

This came up in beta feedback: #mobile > Flutter Beta: Some Feedback @ 💬

[jyn514]

i find search extremely useful and miss it a lot on the mobile app, it means i have to use zulip through a mobile browser instead some of the time.

[gnprice]

Thanks @jyn514 for the feedback!

The legacy mobile app has a search feature but with limitations: it only supports searching for a text query, not limiting by channel or sender or any of Zulip's other search filters. Do you (or would you) similarly miss search when using the legacy app, or would a search feature with those limitations cover many of the times you use search?

[jyn514]

the specific thing i wanted to do just now was find #t-infra/bootstrap > Collecting some Real Configs for testing @ 💬. i tried several searches before thinking to search for "keep-stage". i was on the website, so i could do an "advanced" search that limited to #t-infra/bootstrap, but if i do the "naive" search, it still shows up as the 6th hit: https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/search/keep-stage
so yes, i would find this useful even with sharp limitations.

[gnprice]

Another request for this today (#mobile > search @ 💬):

Hello we are evaluating Zulip and hoping to migrate soon. The one issue holding us up is lack of search in the mobile beta (flutter) client […] even just basic search like the legacy mobile app