Re: Searching issue

["Aaron D. Turner" <aturner@best.com>]

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On Wed, 28 Apr 1999, Robert Myers wrote:

> On Wed, 28 Apr 1999, Aaron Turner wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Since last night we decided to go to a dynamic format, we're going to have
> > to modify the way htsearch (the htdig CGI) is executed.
> > 
> 
> I take it here that we are using the cgi to do searches still?  Can sum1
> get me up to speed on this?  How will this interface with php pages and
> the simple and advanced search pages?

The processor/reformatter will be mod_perl.  This will save us an extra
fork().  There's no way to aviod a fork() with htsearch.

Basically the PHP search form will call /perl/search.pl which is a
mod_perl script.  search.pl will execute the htsearch cgi (a C program),
read in the output of htsearch (stdout), reformat it with the proper
header/footer info (to make it look like our site), and return the results
to the browser.
 
> > We were going to generate different header and footers for the search
> > results so that people wouldn't get "lost" and we could keep the look more
> > linuxkb'ish.  Since now we can't make those files, they'll have to be
> > generated on the fly.
> > 
> 
> 	I thought that we had discussed a GET method for all of this, so
> users could bookmark and what not.  Am I lost that we did not talk about
> this?

That's still true, and this doesn't effect this.  Basically the reason for
the mod_perl wrapper is this (example):

Joe drills down to Networking->Dialup->PPP
Joe does a search on "CHAP and Authentication"
Joe gets a results page showing all the hits

now without the mod_perl wrapper, Joe "looses his place"... that is,
htsearch doesn't know anything about our drill down, so after the search
he is no longer drilled down.  The mod_perl wrapper provides Joe the the
navigation links that are approprate in the article tree.  Since these
nav-links change depending on where Joe drilled down, they need to be
generated dynamically... something that htsearch can't do.

> > Anyways, I'm going to create a mod_perl wrapper for this.  I'd like to get
> > some ideas from the group regarding the implimentation.
> > 
> 	
> 	This is for the php->searchcgi stuff right?

See above for clarification.
 
> > 2)  The URL will contain the search params, so someone can bookmark the
> > results page.
> 
> 	This the the GET thing we had talked about right?

Yes, but actually it takes it one step further.  We discussed bookmarking
your place when you drill down.  I'm talking about being able to bookmark
an actual search results page.
 
> > 3)  Ability to keep the state of either simple or advanced search form UI.
> 
> 	keep the state? cookies/ env variables passed to and from each
> page.

?form=[adv|basic] is what I had in mind.

- -Aaron


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