Overview of Customizing the Search Provider

The Search provider (SearchProvider) furnishes a basic reference user interface that contains both search and browse functionality. Search functionality includes basic search mode, and advanced search for more complex searches. You can perform specific field searches in advanced search mode. For example, while in advanced mode, you can search within the title, URL, last modified date, author, and so on.

SearchProvider provides a link for category browsing. In addition, you can create a taxonomy for the Search Engine along with category filter rules. You can browse through the taxonomy tree and view documents within a category through the Search provider interface.

Search Provider Design

The Search provider uses JSPProvider to access the Portal Server back end services. The Search provider users JavaServer Pages^TM (JSP^TM) helper tag libraries to avoid using Java^TM scriptlets. The searchServer is a global service list type attribute that is configured and updated at installation time. The Search provider is responsible for directing the search request to the appropriate back end Search Engine server.

See the Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 Technical Reference for the display profile properties you can set for the provider.

Search JavaServer Pages and Tag Libraries

The Search provider consists of two stages (input form and results) and the JSPs used by the Search provider fall into one of those two stages.

The following Example 11–1explains the JSP layout for searchContent.jsp. In the input stage (Stage 1), searchContent.jsp makes use of searchMenu.jsp and psSearch.jsp to set up the initial interface. The basicSearch.jsp file is used for a basic search and advancedSearch.jsp file for an advanced search. The description menu (that is, the Full, Brief, and Title menus) is displayed for both basic and advanced searches by descMenu.jsp file. The browseHeader.jsp file defines the browse interface.

In the results stage (Stage 2), one of three JSPs is used: browseOnly.jsp file sets and executes the parameters for category browsing using the Search tag library, and includes the browseResults.jsp page; browseSearch.jsp file sets and executes the parameters for searching and browsing within categories using the Search tag library and includes browseSearchResults.jsp; and searchOnly.jsp file sets and executes the parameters for search using search the Search tag library and includes results.jsp and score.jsp for the match relevance. The pageFooter.jsp file displays the list of pages, Next, and Previous links.

Example 11–1 JSP Layout for searchContent.jsp

searchContent.jsp
	|
	|------>searchMenu.jsp
	|
	|------>psSearch.jsp
	|
	|------>basicSearch.jsp----->descMenu.jsp (if search mode is basic)
	|
	|------>advancedSearch.jsp-->descMenu.jsp (if search mode is advanced)
	|
	|------>browseHeader.jsp (if browse mode is selected)
	|
	|					STAGE 1 INPUT
	_______________________________________________________________________________
	|	|
	|	|				STAGE 2 INPUT
	|	|
	|	|--->browseOnly.jsp----->browseResults.jsp (category browsing in browse mode)
	|
	|------>browseSearch.jsp--->browseSearchResults.jsp (only for category search)
	|
	|------>searchOnly.jsp----->results.jsp--->score.jsp(displays the match relevance)
	|
	|------>pageFooter.jsp

See the Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 Technical Reference for more information on the Search JSP files.

The Search JSPs use the following tag libraries, which ship with the Portal Server software:

• Jakarta tag library, for any generic tags

• Desktop tag library, for the Portal Server software related information

• Search tag library to cover all Search Engine server access functionality and to provide a tag-based wrapper for the existing public search and SOIF API

See the Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 Technical Reference for more information.