(Trying to) develop a unified text search...

[RGBreality]

Hey, folks!

I'm trying to develop a unified text search across my application. Let me briefly explain the scope of this application.

I am (trying to) create an application in which all the separate online Help documents for my company's product can be displayed and searched in a unified interface. I am using a Web Control object to display each HTML Help document. I am thinking of using only a single frame as the main interface, then calling sub-applications to display each HTML Help document. This way, I can use an Update widget to update each individual document separately.

More to the point of this post, though, I would like to create a unified text search function in this application. I have looked at the Search object, but it seems to designed to search file and directory content and not necessarily text in the application. This, however, may prove to be better, since if a text search takes place across all documents in the file structure, it would return hits even if those documents are not presently displayed/loaded into a Web Control object.

However, I seem to be having some difficulty implementing this search function. I have placed an Edit box, a simple button, and (for now) another Edit box in which to display search results.

The button is disabled until text content is placed into the first Edit box. Once the Edit box has content and the button is clicked, the Search object gets the content of the first Edit box, performs a search against an index which is built at the beginning of the application loading, then displays the results in the second Edit box.

Of course, though, it's not working. I suspect I'm not using the Search object properly.

One question I have is what file format is a search index to be saved? There is an option in the Search object that it can index a specified directory, then that index can be saved. However, the Search object's documentation doesn't specify what file format that index is to be saved. Once I know how it is to be saved, I can load that index when a text search is required.

I am not sure what action is used in the Search object to display search results into the second Edit box.

A much more trickier thing I must consider is once I display proper results, how do I allow the user to reference those hits? In other words, how can I create hyperlinks from the search result(s) to the corresponding document?

I am definitely open to feedback and suggestions.

Thank you!


Most sincerely,

RGBreality

[LB]

Would it not be so much easier to get a Help Maker program to make windows help (.chm) files? They have seraching built in.

But wanyway, Scintilla has a find and replace, and you can use that for starters. Also, you don't even need a search objct or any extension, it is possible to loop through with one fastloop and compare for text that you are searching for, then highlight it. I don't know how to do this with the web control object without createing a new temporary file with the HTML to highlight the text.

[RGBreality]

Hey, LB! As always, thank you for your reply!

Actually, each HTML Help document has built-in search functionality; these documents are created using a documentation tool called WebWorks. However, the search functionality is limited to its own document. I need some functionality which can search across multiple HTML Help documents.

You might ask why don't I just create one large HTML Help document, so that I would have unified search across all documents? The reason why I am not in favor of this approach is that I want to be able to offer updating functionality on a per-document basis (since some documents are updated more frequently than others). If all the documents were bundled into one unified HTML Help document, then I couldn't offer updating on a per-document basis.

Actually, I could create CHM files using WebWorks, but I would have the same issue.

I have never used Fastloops... How would I set one up to search for a text string?

Let me also pose this to you... Perhaps the Search object might be the best tool for the job, since each HTML Help document is composed of individual HTML files. Isn't the Search object used to find text in files within a directory structure? Since I haven't seen how results are rendered, I don't know if the Search object offers any way of linking to the source HTML file.

And if I were to use the Search object, how would I index the directory (and its subdirectories)? Do you by chance know what file extension is used to save a compiled index created by the Search object?

Lots of questions, huh?...

Thanks again!



Most sincerely,

RGBreality

[LB]

It is too complex to explain so I made an example instead

Here it is: http://www.clickteam.com/epicenter/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=194276