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Visible Search Applet Customization

Available Search Applet Components

QuestAgent visible search applet is a highly customizable component. Search applet provides search logic and hooks for different visible controls.

The main search applet configuration parameter is components that lists component identifiers. For example:

   components=collChoice querySimplePanel resultsList descPanel paginationPanel

Each component identifier must point to a Java class that is initialized and added to the search applet. For example:

   collList.class=com.jobjects.quest.agent.CollectionListPanel

Provided components may be combined in any manner you like. All component labels, fonts, colors, etc. may be customized. Please, check deployed parameter file (defaults.prm) for the complete list of options and their default values. It’s a good practice to specify custom parameters in qagent.prm instead to change default parameter file.

Collection Choice Controls

Collection choice control allows user to select one or more collections for the next search. If search applet does not have collection choice panel, it will search in all available collections.

Java class com.jobjects.quest.agent.CollectionListPanel shows collection choice as a multi collection list.

Java class com.jobjects.quest.agent.CollectionChoicePanel”’ shows collection choice as a combo box.

Java class com.jobjects.quest.agent.CollectionCheckBoxPanel shows collection choice as a list of check boxes. Number of columns is customizable.

Query Input Controls

Java class com.jobjects.quest.agent.SimpleQueryPanel

Java class: com.jobjects.quest.agent.FieldedSearchPanel

Result Lists

Java class: com.jobjects.quest.agent.SearchResultsPanel shows simple results list. Format of list item can be customized using components resultFormat.

Java class com.jobjects.quest.agent.SearchResultsTablePanel presents results in a table. Format and type of data shown can be customized.

Other Controls

Java class com.jobjects.quest.agent.FieldValuePanel shows resource information when an item in the result list is selected.

Java class com.jobjects.quest.agent.PagingResultsPanel shows search messages and allows user to see more results.

Hit Description Format

Several components (result lists and hit description panel) use the same syntax for formating of text that will be shown. Format syntax may contain any text and content of one or more stored fields referenced by expression: ${field_name}.

For example, format for the results list that shows hit number and title field looks like this:

   resultsList.params.resultFormat=${%}. ${(title)}

In some fields you can even use HTML formatting:

   htmlDescPanel.params.fieldFormat=<html><b>${uri}</b><br><font size="-1">${(summary_hl)}</font></html>

Search Applet Messages Customization

QuestAgent allows you to customize messages reported during or as a result of a search process. These messages include reporting of number of hits, query parsing, etc.

Deployed defaults parameter file (defaults.prm) includes default values of all messages. In parameter file you may see entries like:

 msg.nothing_found = No matches. Refine your query and try again.
 msg.hits_found = Pages found: {0}  (estimated total {1})
 msg.hits_found_all = Total pages found: {0}

For the complete list of messages check defaults.prm file.

Messages specified in parameter files are used by visual search applet only. Search interface samples based on HTML/!JavaScript use messages defined by configuration object. See QuestAgent’s JavaScript API and samples for details.