Search feature in Flexi

We built a site with several distinct databases. Each DB has its own template and subcategories.

We were using the General Joomla search, but I quickly found several issues with it.

FYI, the site is divided in "Company", "Products" and "Support". Each of these link correspond to a top level category and each has several subcategories and items.
In addition, Each link loads a different left column menu.


1) The result page seemed to have a strange ID because it was loading modules that belonged to different links

2) In any cases, depending on the search, the string was found, but every result page only had a title but an empty content

3) Others had the title and the content but also an additional category title on top.

In addition to that, the client asked us to parse the results so that each category results would be divided by category. What that means is that if I am searching for product XYZ and that product is actually found not only in the product category, but also in the other 2 top level categories, the search results should look something like this:

Results:

Cat. Company:
XYZ
Cat: Products:
XYZ1
XYZ2
XYZ3
Cat. Support:
How to get support for XYZ products

I hope that makes sense.

We don't really know how to go about it and I am dinfing it difficult to create a "Common Search" field that

a) Returns valid search results (meaning no empty pages or extra modules)
b) Allows the user to search by category and/or returns result separated by category.

If anything like that or something similar is possible, please let me know. Thank you.

PS: I'll be happy to give admin access to one of my backup sites if that helps.

Hello, you are asking for custom development?

NOTE: Final version of FLEXIcontent has (free of charge ) a full faceted search/filtering:

- for content list views (single category, multi-category, author-items, my-items)
- for search view

BUT FOR category filter ONLY a single multi-select drop list is available.

r1640 (FINAL if no bugs found)

New Features:
(a) New multiple filter appearances, as dual select/text ranges, single select/text, single radio buttons, checkbox buttons (date ranges & dates groupings)
(b) New Full Faceted search/filtering : with disabling of unused values and reporting of items total per filter value
(c) New smart handling 'dirty' search Fields (fields that make rebuilding index) necessary, thus making re-indexing much-more user friendly
(d) Drag and drop reordering for fields manager (like in items manager)
(e) Added more detailed performance reports (enable in Global config and use URL variable &fcdebug=1 to enable)

-- Improvements (Restructed parameters)
(a) for Universal modules and
(b) almost all fields
-- Improvements, Restructed Backend Toobars of various view to make them more user-friendly (items,fields,search index)

Other improvements and new ... (don't remember now )

Bug Fixes: 10-15 minor and medium-important bugfixes (fixed myitems edit links, a couple of bug in universal module, a bug in routing causing error 500 on URLs longer than 3 segments, etc)

Security Fixes: 2 minor to avoid unwanted redirection to off-site via exploit in voting, and 1 important security fix

PROFILED code for PERFORMANCE (mainly frontend views), medium to big performance improvements:
(a) category view 2x-10x (10x when 50 items with content plugin triggering enabled for various fields),
(b) item view about 30%
(c) item form about 15% when having many fields (BUT MORE TO DO)
(d) backend Search Index rebuilding about 5x-10x faster
(e) universal module about 30% ??

Hello, these are available for download
code.google.com/p/flexicontent/downloads/list

V1.5.6 final r1645
V2.0.0 final r1645

Thank you ggppdk, I am sorry I didn't come back to check on this in the past few days, but we had to launch the site "as is" and we had to coordinate with the IT guys from the client company and it was an ordeal.

I am glad to hear that there is a new search. Of course, I am a bit concerned about installing the new flexicontent version. What is your experience? Have the tempolates been changed a lot? We had to build a lot of custom template to adapt the many requests for different type of views we got. How is that going to affect the website? Do we need to diff the templates and merge the changes or the old templates will still work OK?

As far as the filters, I have to admit that the filtering system in flexicontent is still a mystery to me. I haven't been able not just to use it, but to understand how it works at all. I know in principal how it should work, but I seem unable to establish the filters to begin with, or I should say to do step 1 of the process. So far whenever filters are mentioned, I try to interact with the interface but I don't see a way to create a filter at all.

In any case, I will update a staging site that we have and see how that works. I will report back. Thank you for your help.

The changes for search filtering in v2.0.0 are very extensive

More user friendly and fully faceted search !! using images and custom fields in search results etc (be sure to rebuild search-index and check the new option in Joomla Menu Item for Flexicontent Searc)

Also upcoming v2.0.1 offers better templating appearance for search view and fixes "the second page has no results" bug

ggppdk, the new FAceted search sounds very exciting. I know my way around joomla backend but I am new to Flexi content.

Could you please point me in the direction of any documentation I can read to get up to speed with the new search feature and how to implement search tags etc in articles.

Thanks, W.