Search by ancestor
For both content and media, Umbraco saves a field with the path of each content or media item. This field is a comma separated value (CSV) of the ancestors. CSV fields are not particular friendly for searching, but with the help of the IndexCsv extension method provided by this package, we can make them a lot friendlier.
Make path searchable
The extension method is for an instance of IndexingItemEventArgs. So way we want to make the path of each item in the external index searchable, we could do as in the example below:
using System;
using Examine;
using Examine.Providers;
using Umbraco.Core.Composing;
using Skybrud.Umbraco.Search.Extensions;
namespace UmbracoTests.Repositories.News {
public class SearchComponent : IComponent {
private readonly IExamineManager _examineManager;
public SearchComponent(IExamineManager examineManager) {
_examineManager = examineManager;
}
public void Initialize() {
if (!_examineManager.TryGetIndex(Umbraco.Core.Constants.UmbracoIndexes.ExternalIndexName, out IIndex index))
throw new InvalidOperationException($"No index found by name {Umbraco.Core.Constants.UmbracoIndexes.ExternalIndexName}");
if (!(index is BaseIndexProvider indexProvider))
throw new InvalidOperationException("Could not cast");
indexProvider.TransformingIndexValues += IndexProviderOnTransformingIndexValues;
}
public void Terminate() {
// do some cleanup
}
private void IndexProviderOnTransformingIndexValues(object sender, IndexingItemEventArgs e) {
// THIS IS WHERE THINGS HAPPEN
e.IndexCsv("path");
}
}
}
For using the method, you should specify the key if the field you wish to make searchable - eg. here the path field. The method will then split the value by the commas, and then join them back together using a space instead, and add the new value to a field named path_search.
Search path
For a simple news search, we could create a NewsSearchOptions class implementing the ISearchOptions interface.
You can build up the Examine query your self, but you can also use the QueryList class from this package, as it provides some helpful methods - eg. the AppendAncestor method as used in the example below:
using Skybrud.Umbraco.Search;
using Skybrud.Umbraco.Search.Options;
namespace UmbracoTests.Repositories.News {
public class NewsSearchOptions : ISearchOptions {
public int ContextId { get; set; }
public string GetRawQuery(ISearchHelper searchHelper) {
QueryList list = new QueryList();
if (ContextId > 0) list.AppendAncestor(ContextId);
list.AppendNodeTypeAlias("newsPage");
return list.GetRawQuery();
}
}
}
In case you wish to search by multiple ancestors, there is a AppendAncestors method as well, which will result in an OR based search for the specified ancestors.