Re: Searching issue

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

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On Wed, 28 Apr 1999, Robert Myers wrote:

[snip]
 
> On Wed, 28 Apr 1999, Aaron D. Turner wrote:

> > 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.
> > 
> 
> 	Well, joe would never lose his place if you used variables in the
> pages to track his place.  Which should not be that big a deal really.
> 
> 	Sumn like
> search.php3?cat=x$subcat=y&anothersubcat=whatever&whatever=nothing
> 
> You get my general gist here.  will that fit into what you had envisioned
> for the search pages?

Ok, now we're talking about two different things.  First is the search
form.  Then there is the htdig search CGI program: htsearch.

The search form: search.php3 serves two purposes:

1)  A search UI to allow people to search the site "from here".

2)  A drilldown UI, to allow them to navigate the categories

search.php3 does *not* directly exectute the htsearch CGI.  Rather it
would output a:

<FORM METHOD="post" ACTION="/perl/search.pl">

Anyways back to Joe:

Everything is find and dandy for Joe as long as he drills-down.  The php3
page (search.php3) tracks his movements and he can bookmark them.  But as
soon as he executes a search, htsearch is executed.  htsearch knows squat
about our "categories".  That's where the mod_perl script, search.pl comes
in.  It deals with the drill down variables just like search.php3 would,
and passes the search variables to htsearch.  It then executes htsearch,
intercepts its output, reformats it (adds our dynamic nav-bar and dynamic
drill down category lists) and spits out the search results sandwiched
with the dynamic stuff.

This allows Joe to "save his place" on the site after he executes a
search.  A bonus of this is now that the search results are bookmarkable.
 
> > 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.
> 
> 	Yeah, the above URL will always return to the search results.  The
> GET's could include search params or sumn to that effect.  Sumn like
> altavista and those guys do.

Yeah, that's the idea.


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