Microsoft Content Management Server : Adding a Search Page to the MCMS Site (part 2) - Building a Custom Search Implementation - Building a Search Input Control

Building a Custom Search Implementation

As outlined previously, there are advantages and disadvantages to the MCMS Connector search controls. The most obvious is the fact that the SearchResultControl does not allow us to configure the results returned by the SPS search We will now build our own search implementation that will leverage the SPS search Web Service, offer advanced and specialized searching to our users, and present the results in a customizable manner.

About the SharePoint Portal Server Query Service

Everything we are about to build depends upon the Query Service Web Service, included in SPS, that exposes search functionality to remote clients, such as our website. This web service accepts a request in the Microsoft.Search.Query XML format and returns a response in the Microsoft.Search.Response XML format. In order to build a robust solution, the request we submit will use the Microsoft SQL Syntax for full-text Search. One method offered by the Query Service is QueryEx, which we will use as it returns results in the form of a DataSet.

Building a Search Input Control

The first thing we’ll do is build a search input control that will submit a search query to a page for processing. This implementation will allow us to add a small search component to all of our templates quickly. Upon submitting a search query, our user control will add the query parameters to the querystring and redirect the request to the results page.

Let’s first start by creating a new user control.

private void lnkAdvancedSearch_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
  Response.Redirect(Request.ApplicationPath + "/SearchResults.aspx");
}

private void btnExecuteSearch_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
  string keywords = this.txtSearchInput.Text;

}

Let’s see if everything is OK with our new search input control. Save your changes and build the project. If you receive any error messages, retrace your steps and ensure that there are no typos.

Before this control can be used, we need to add it to an existing template. While we’d ideally want to provide the search on all pages on our site (typically by adding it to a global heading control), we’ll just add it to the homepage for now.

<td width="100%" colspan="2" valign="top" bgcolor="#ffcc00">
  <img src="/tropicalgreen/images/Logo.gif">&nbsp;
  <div align="right">

</td>

					  

The HomePage.aspx template should now look similar to the following:

The Advanced Search and Results Page

Once we have our search input control built, we need a page that will execute the search against the SPS Query Service Web Service and display the results. In addition, like all other search result pages, we need to add advanced searching options such as limiting our search to the Tropical Green plant catalog.

Before we can start building the results page, we need to add a web reference to the SPS Query Service Web Service:

For simplicity, the search results page we will create will not be a CMS template, rather it will be a standard ASP.NET Web Form in the root of the Tropical Green project.

<form id="Form1" method="post" runat="server">
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">

</form>

					  

We now have the basic layout for our advanced search and search results page, which looks similar to the other templates in our site. Let’s add some controls for our advanced search.

Our advanced search page should now look like this:

Now it’s time to start coding our search logic. First, we need to add an event handler for our advanced search button.

private void btnAdvancedSearch_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
  string keywords = this.txtAdvancedSearch.Text;

}

Next, we need to check the querystring in the Page_Load() event handler to see if any keywords were passed from our SearchInput.ascx control or the txtAdvancedSearch TextBox.

Add the following code to check if there are any keywords supplied and execute the search if so:

private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
  if (Request.QueryString["keywords"] != null

}

Now we need to create the method that will execute the search against our SPS content index. This method will:

• Create an instance of the Query Service Web Service we just added to the project.

• Call a method that will build the MSQuery to submit to the Query Service.

• Execute the search.

• Bind the search results to a DataGrid.

Import the following namespaces in the SearchResults.aspx.cs file:

using System.Security.Principal;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Net;
using System.Text;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using Microsoft.ContentManagement.Publishing;

Add the following method to the SearchResults.aspx.cs file after the Page_Load() event handler. This method will ensure the current thread is running under the original security context regardless of any impersonations that may have been invoked previously:

// Get reference to the RevertToSelf method
[DllImport("ADVAPI32.DLL")]
public static extern int RevertToSelf();

/// <summary>
/// Builds the appropriate MSQuery,
/// submits the query to the SPS Query Service,
/// and returns the results as a DataGrid.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="keywords">String of keywords to search for.</param>
/// <returns>DataSet of search results.</returns>
private DataSet ExecuteSearch(string keywords)
{
  // decode the list of keywords
  keywords = HttpUtility.UrlDecode(keywords);

  // create reference to the Query Service Web service
  net.tropicalgreen.portal.QueryService spsQueryService =
                           new net.tropicalgreen.portal.QueryService();

  // use the current application pool identity to login
  // to the SharePoint Query Service Web service
  WindowsIdentity CurrentUser = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent();

  try
  {
    // use the Application Pool account to do access the
    // SharePoint Search Services
    RevertToSelf();
    spsQueryService.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
  }
  catch(System.Exception exception)
  {
    throw new System.Exception(exception.Message);
  }
  finally
  {
    // ensure that the original user is being impersonated again
    CurrentUser.Impersonate();
    CurrentUser = null;
  }

  // build MSQuery XML string to send to the Query Service
  // - change the content source to "CMSChannels" if you used SearchSetup.exe
  string msQuery = BuildMSQuery(keywords, "Tropical Green website");

  // execute the query and return the dataset
  return spsQueryService.QueryEx(msQuery);
}

					  

Our ExecuteSearch() method calls another method, called BuildMsQuery(), which constructs the MSQuery for sending to the QueryEx() web method. An MSQuery is composed of XML tags that provide instructions to the Query Service, such as the number of results to return in the request and a Microsoft SQL full-text (MSSQLFT) query. Building the MSSQLFT query and MSQuery is likely to be the most complicated task in implementing the SharePoint search. We’ll break it into two tasks: building the actual MSSQLFT query and building the MSQuery XML string. We’ll first build the full-text query that our MSQuery will use in the construction of the XML string we’ll send to the Query Service.