A custom ExpressionEngine search module

What Boyink said.

I posted this feature request over two years ago and it still sums up my desires for an EE search. Site-wide results - the search should be blind to what EE tool the content is implemented in, only that it appears on the domain (or domains) specified. Relevance.

These two are at the root of EEs search problem.I’ve been looking for something better than the built-in EE search for some time with no success really. Relevance is the highest priority - if you don’t get quality, relevant results then any other features don’t really matter do they?. Site-wide results are important - there are slices of content you can potentially not return currently, which isn’t acceptable today. Searching of PDFs in designated upload locations would be a killer feature I think.

Very excited about this potential module!

Sounds like Matt at Vector already has a head start on this - at least with relevance. I think the quickest way to get this developed for all is to post the modified module to a (private) repo at GitHub (if this is just a modified version of the core EE Search module) and invite collaborators such as Kevin Shoesmith to take it and run with it. Just a suggestion.

We have several projects that use category parent and child, sometimes 3 or more generations (if that is the correct word).

The search function that we always have to hack is having three menu choices (in the case of 3 ‘generations’) where any time a parent is chosen, the next menu will only show that parent’s child list. For example: Country –> State –> Town.

My 5 cents.

Ability to optionally have physical files (documents) indexed and included in search results - perhaps via a daily cron job would be neat.

What we’d hoped to get out of posting this thread is exactly what we got. Thanks for your input, everyone, it’s extremely helpful.

Relevance indeed seems to be the dominant emerging theme, something which we’ll certainly build into the module. Naturally, there are different criteria for relevance that could effect results, and different ways of doing it effectively.

In more mature versions, we intend on giving you the option of choosing the type of relevance you’d like in your search query/results, but for now, we’ll just get a first version working.

Thanks again, all. In inimitable EE style, we can’t say when we’ll have it out, but if you’re interested in helping field test a beta version, PM me and we’ll select a handful of folks to send the module to.

1. We implemented relevance via putting results in the following order: First: Exact title matching Second: partial-word title matching Third: Any field matching -Matt

Matt - did you do that at the search form level by making

{lang:search_any_words}
{lang:search_all_words}
{lang:search_exact_word}

Hidden field values?

Matt - did you do that at the search form level by making

{lang:search_any_words}
{lang:search_all_words}
{lang:search_exact_word}

Hidden field values?

No– that would just get you one of those (the one physically last in the code, if they’re hidden inputs).

We modified the mod.search.php file to completely rewrite the search SQL queries based on the POSTED data.

Nevermind. I see the parameters…this kid and sleep deprivation has me off my rocker.

oh, ok. Just saw your reply. See what I mean…LOL

An option/parameter to search in specific custom fields. When working with multilingual sites using one entry with the language variation (like Mark Huots SimpleTranslator) searching within specific language is impossible with the standard search in EE since it seraches all fields with search_in=”entries” parameter.

search_in_fields="title_sk|summary_sk|body_sk"

This paramter would for example, search only in the these specific custom fileds containing the slovak lang translation.

Ditto that.

I’ve been creating a business directory site and not being able to search a particular field only is a killer.

With respect to ‘relevance’, I’d also like to be able to extend what is relevant eg. if you’ve geo-located your entries, the nearest are shown first or if you’ve applied a rating, the rating influences the relevance. Perhaps there needs to be a plugin system for search?

has there been any progress on this?

I’d like to give this a bump as well.. I am in need of a more full featured search for a travel site I am working on.

One thing I need is to be able to search across my Playa relationships, meaning that where I have an accommodation that relates to a location or multiple locations, I would like to search for accommodations only within that location. From what I can see this is not currently possible with simple or advanced search?

Request 1 That the search returns more like what is expected. http://www.cactuslanguagetraining.com/en/ For my results so far searches return too much. A search for “arabic” and first and about 7th are the results i would expect to see.

Request 2 search/?phrase=arabic having a query string not a hash for the search. I know this might have to be /search/arabic for the rewrite.

Request 3 A result show more interesting words so highlight phrases in title or extract.

Request 4 Limiting by tag of articles. I have articles in a category but it might be tagged with one of five languages.

Request 5 URL structure for link for each result rather than the same format for all.