# Search with partial MBID

**URL:** <https://community.metabrainz.org/t/search-with-partial-mbid/685571>\
**Category:** MusicBrainz\
**Tags:** en, search, api\
**Created:** [March 11, 2024, 7:52am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/search-with-partial-mbid/685571 "2024-03-11T07:52:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![docky](https://community.metabrainz.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/f17d59/32.png) [@docky](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/docky)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 7:52am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/search-with-partial-mbid/685571/1 "2024-03-11T07:52:18Z")

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Hi,

I was wondering, is there any interest in (or is it even possible) implementing a search feature that allows for partial MBID searches?

Skimming through [doc/Indexed\_Search\_Syntax](https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Indexed_Search_Syntax) and [doc/..API/Search](https://musicbrainz.org/doc/MusicBrainz_API/Search) I noticed that some queries allow for `(part of)` strings. Would be cool if, for example, searching for `reid:d1ad9426` (the first house of MBID `d1ad9426-9f5b-40da-8d04-b0149195d6b6`) found the release via the server search; the MBID field in [Search - MusicBrainz](https://musicbrainz.org/search), even something like `release:d1ad9426` on Picard could narrow down the results too?

Also afaik partial MBID searches (kinda) work on Google.

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**Author:** ![reosarevok](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/reosarevok/32/69228_2.png) [@reosarevok](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/reosarevok)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 8:15am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/search-with-partial-mbid/685571/2 "2024-03-11T08:15:56Z")

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What would be the use case? I’m not sure when you have _half_ an MBID 🙂

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![docky](https://community.metabrainz.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/f17d59/32.png) [@docky](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/docky)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 8:27pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/search-with-partial-mbid/685571/3 "2024-03-11T20:27:19Z")

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What I though was when a portion of the MBID is used for disambiguation like `$if(%musicbrainz_albumid%,$left(%musicbrainz_albumid%,8))` in file naming (like IMDb IDs). helps too when files are in a remote so listings and tag scans are slower