Properties are for Guiding, not for Restricting
When you define a property-set with 'strongly-typed' property values, those values are used to provide an intuitive, guiding UI for tagging and locating items.
The actual value does not force a strong relationship to the original property-set's predefined values. This is by design, to not slow-down common repository operations and for keeping artifacts management simple by allowing properties to change and evolve freely over time, without worrying about breaking older property rules.
Properties are therefore a helpful and non-restrictive feature.
From this link: https://www.jfrog.com/confluence/display/RTF/Properties
Does this mean that artifactory doesn't restrict by properties in any way?
So if I have the following:
file1.txt with properties a, b, c
file2.txt with properties a, b, e
And I search for files with properties 'b' and 'e' both files will be returned, because both files have property 'b', even though file1.txt doesn't have property 'e'?
I would like to be able to search by property and only return files with property 'b' and 'e'. Is that possible?
Or is the only solution to filter after the query?
I'm using the java client, and I don't know the file names before-hand, just a few properties.
You need to use AQL to make queries via the java client. Searching for files based on properties is very fast and powerful. Once you find the files you want, THEN query those exact files instead.