Nostr content is distributed over many, many relays, which may be public/free, paid or private relays.
Whatever client you use, it will be connected to only a subset of those relays (which you can change).
The behaviour of search depends on:
a) The specific relays your client connects to
b) How your particular client handles search
c) How different relay server software handles a search query
In theory, when doing a search, your client should connect your chosen relays, and show you what those relays have to say about the particular search query.
So, you won't see "whole database" - meaning all the content across all active nostr relays.
Furthermore, if an identify that you follow posts content to a relay that you don't connect to, or which you don't have access to, you won't see that content. That said, some clients leverage NIP05 identifiers and other tricks to try and fetch a relay list for identities, and will fetch stuff from those relays if they can.
Given Nostr's distributed nature, search is a relatively hard problem for the time being.
Ignatio
npub1r2…q6rtn
2023-02-21 13:30:30
in reply to nevent1q…z7nr
Author Public Key
npub1r2x8j028pdjdlrtu65z4y99xre09dcuyu7cct49gfhcmz93t00eqzq6rtnPublished at
2023-02-21 13:30:30Event JSON
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"created_at": 1676986230,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
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"content": "Nostr content is distributed over many, many relays, which may be public/free, paid or private relays.\n\nWhatever client you use, it will be connected to only a subset of those relays (which you can change).\n\nThe behaviour of search depends on:\n\n\na) The specific relays your client connects to\nb) How your particular client handles search\nc) How different relay server software handles a search query\n\n\nIn theory, when doing a search, your client should connect your chosen relays, and show you what those relays have to say about the particular search query.\n\nSo, you won't see \"whole database\" - meaning all the content across all active nostr relays.\n\nFurthermore, if an identify that you follow posts content to a relay that you don't connect to, or which you don't have access to, you won't see that content. That said, some clients leverage NIP05 identifiers and other tricks to try and fetch a relay list for identities, and will fetch stuff from those relays if they can.\n\nGiven Nostr's distributed nature, search is a relatively hard problem for the time being.\n",
"sig": "5dae74c4ad8b7c0226bbd6a18ea7e26ea97671697ec7ad0994f248b9b15bc504aa7367df4bbac07dacfd05c4ce9ddf738b07e9ff51e326ff2f05942fd1c18eb6"
}