Question

What all is involved in setting up Auto-Complete to make searching questions easier for the user?

Comments

This will be very useful feature. we can suggest Gideon for 1.5 version.

Answer 1

Actually, it doesn't seem to be all that hard.  I copied the /qa-include/qa-page-search.php file and then used the code pasted below.

require_once QA_INCLUDE_DIR.'qa-app-users.php';

 

require_once QA_INCLUDE_DIR.'qa-app-cookies.php';

require_once QA_INCLUDE_DIR.'qa-app-format.php';

 

// Perform the search if appropriate

 

if (strlen(qa_get('q'))) {

require_once QA_INCLUDE_DIR.'qa-db-selects.php';

require_once QA_INCLUDE_DIR.'qa-util-string.php';

 

$inquery=trim(qa_get('q'));

$words=qa_string_to_words($inquery);

$retrieve=2*QA_DB_RETRIEVE_QS_AS+1; // get enough results to be able to give some idea of how many pages of search results there are

 

//ADDED BY NATHAN

$qa_login_userid=qa_get_logged_in_userid();

$qa_start=min(max(0, (int)qa_get('start')), QA_MAX_LIMIT_START);

$qa_cookieid=qa_cookie_get();

//END ADDED BY NATHAN

 

 

$questions=qa_db_select_with_pending(

qa_db_search_posts_selectspec($qa_login_userid, $words, $words, $words, $words, $inquery, $qa_start, false, $retrieve)

);

 

$pagesize=qa_opt('page_size_search');

$gotcount=count($questions);

$questions=array_slice($questions, 0, $pagesize);

 

$usershtml=qa_userids_handles_html($questions);

 

qa_report_event('ajax_search', $qa_login_userid, qa_get_logged_in_handle(), $qa_cookieid, array(

'query' => $inquery,

'start' => $qa_start,

));

 

 

echo json_encode($questions);

}

 

I also had to add a "search" case to the switch statement in qa-include/qa-ajax.php

 

case 'search':

require QA_INCLUDE_DIR.'qa-ajax-search.php';

break;

 

To allow browser-based testing I also allowed a few variables to be read from the $_REQUEST array instead of the $_POST array.

 

With those changes done, you can point your browser to 

 

YOURDOMAIN/qa/index.php?qa=ajax&qa_operation=search&q=searchQuery

And you'll get JSON-encoded search results

Answer 2

I also wanted to make add search autocomplete.
I found out that autocomplete option is already built in the code, and is used when someone is asking (not searching) a question on the ask page.

I added a search box to my theme's hearder (you may alrady have your search box somewhere)

<input type="text" placeholder="Find your answer..." name="q" onkeyup="qa_title_change_search(this.value);" autocomplete="off" required>

Then I added the a span which will display the suggested questions just below the search box:

<span id="similar_search"></span>

 

Now I went to qa-ask.js and based on this function "qa_title_change"(which is used for the autocomplete while asking a question) I careated the function: "qa_title_change_search"

function qa_title_change_search(value) {

    qa_ajax_post('asktitle', { title: value }, function (lines) {

        if (lines[0] == '1') {

            if (lines[1].length) {

                qa_tags_examples = lines[1];

                qa_tag_hints(true);

            }

 

            if (lines.length > 2) {

                var simelem = document.getElementById('similar_search');

                if (simelem)

                    simelem.innerHTML = lines.slice(2).join('\n');

            }

 

        } else if (lines[0] == '0')

            alert(lines[1]);

        else

            qa_ajax_error();

    });

 

    qa_show_waiting_after(document.getElementById('similar_search'), true);

}

 

If you want to change the line displayed before the suggested questions, you can look for "ask_same_q" in qa-lan-question.php (be default it is: "Before proceeding, please check your question was not asked already:")

Comments

Hi Alex,
Was wondering if you have implemented it somewhere so we can see, live demo I mean

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Sure,
http://support.3dsellers.com/qa/

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Nice! I am using google powered search which also searches the body of questions, but ofcourse not as cool as an auto search one like your. btw i know a friend who produces a lot of those 3D anaglyph glasses you are also using in your logo