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> 3.3.10 reference manual: Full-featured search engine software</TH
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><DIV
CLASS="sect1"
><H1
CLASS="sect1"
><A
NAME="html"
>Designing <TT
CLASS="filename"
>search.htm</TT
></A
></H1
><P
> This section assumes that you are using
the <ACRONYM
CLASS="acronym"
>CGI</ACRONYM
> front end.
</P
><DIV
CLASS="sect2"
><H2
CLASS="sect2"
><A
NAME="html-respage"
>How the search results page is created</A
></H2
><P
>The file template file <TT
CLASS="filename"
>search.htm</TT
>
consists of a number of blocks delimited by <ACRONYM
CLASS="acronym"
>HTML</ACRONYM
>
comments starting with <TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--comment--></TT
>
and ending with <TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--/comment--></TT
>.
</P
><P
>There is a special block <TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--variables ... --></TT
>
which is used to put <SPAN
CLASS="emphasis"
><I
CLASS="emphasis"
>commands</I
></SPAN
> to.
The other blocks form parts of the output.
</P
><P
>The blocks <TT
CLASS="literal"
><--top--></TT
> and
<TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--bottom--></TT
> are always returned
to the user as the top and the bottom parts of the output
page page respectively.
</P
><P
>The three blocks
<TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--restop--></TT
>,
<TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--res--></TT
> and
<TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--resbot--></TT
> are displayed
to the user in case when a search query produced at
least one result. The blocks <TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--restop--></TT
>
and <TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--resbot--></TT
> are displayed once,
while the block <TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--res--></TT
> is displayed
for every found document.
</P
><P
> Furthermore there is a serie of <SPAN
CLASS="emphasis"
><I
CLASS="emphasis"
>page navigation</I
></SPAN
>
blocks and the blocks
<TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--notfound--></TT
>,
<TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--noquery--></TT
> and
<TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--error--></TT
>.
The latter three blocks are returned occasionally
in situations when search did not return any results.
</P
><P
> Any <ACRONYM
CLASS="acronym"
>HTML</ACRONYM
> code that is outside the pre-defined
blocks in <TT
CLASS="filename"
>search.htm</TT
> is completely ignored.
</P
><P
>The output of <SPAN
CLASS="application"
>search.cgi</SPAN
>
consists of these parts, depending on the situation:
<PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
>
top
restop top top top
res or notfound or error or noquery
resbot bottom bottom bottom
(navigation)
bottom
</PRE
>
</P
><P
>The navigation part is built in the same way,
with the elements that pertain to every results page.
For example,
<TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--navleft--></TT
> and
<TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--navright--></TT
> are used to link to the
previous and next results pages, while
<TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--navXXX_nop--></TT
>
is used when there are no more pages in one or either direction.
</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="sect2"
><H2
CLASS="sect2"
><A
NAME="html-yourhtml"
>Your <ACRONYM
CLASS="acronym"
>HTML</ACRONYM
></A
></H2
><P
>The default <ACRONYM
CLASS="acronym"
>HTML</ACRONYM
> template code
provided in <TT
CLASS="filename"
>search.htm-dist</TT
>
is ready for use, so you may decide to use it
without applying any major modifications.
</P
><P
>Once you decide to add bells and whistles to
your search, you have multiple options. One option is to keep
the simple design of <TT
CLASS="filename"
>search.htm</TT
> and
make it part of a frame set. This way you can add elements
such as menus etc in a frame and keep the
output of <TT
CLASS="filename"
>search.htm</TT
> in another frame.
</P
><P
>Other option is to incorporate your entire
design into <TT
CLASS="filename"
>search.htm</TT
>. As soon
as you understand the idea of the <SPAN
CLASS="emphasis"
><I
CLASS="emphasis"
>blocks</I
></SPAN
>
described above, this should be easy to do.
</P
><P
>For example, you might want a page in tables that looks like this:
<PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
> ----------------------------------
| top table |
|..................................|
| . |
|left . |
| . |
| . main table |
|table . |
| . |
| . |
----------------------------------
</PRE
>
</P
><P
>If you are planning to put your results in the
main table, you can put all the <ACRONYM
CLASS="acronym"
>HTML</ACRONYM
>
code in the <TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--top--></TT
>
block of <TT
CLASS="filename"
>search.htm</TT
>, up to and including the
opening of the main table
(<TT
CLASS="literal"
><table><tr><td></TT
>).
If you then put the closing of the main table and the closing
tags of the page in the <TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--bottom--></TT
> block
(<TT
CLASS="literal"
></table></tr></td></body></html></TT
>)
and leave all other blocks unformatted, you will have the
design of your choice and all your results in the right place.
</P
><P
>In a more complicated design, where you want to
format results individually, you can apply the same method as long as
you keep track of the opening and closing of <ACRONYM
CLASS="acronym"
>HTML</ACRONYM
> elements. You must
either open and close them in the same block, or make sure that any
possible combination of blocks will result in properly opened and
closed <ACRONYM
CLASS="acronym"
>HTML</ACRONYM
> tags.
</P
><P
>What you cannot do without editing the source
code, is change the order in which the blocks are parsed. Taking the
above example, let's assume that you want your page to look like this:
<PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
> ----------------------------------
| logo banner ads |
|..................................|
| . |
|choices . |
| . |
| . results |
|search . |
|button . |
| . |
----------------------------------
</PRE
>
</P
><P
>To get this, you need to have everything except
the results and navigation in the <TT
CLASS="literal"
><!--top--></TT
>
block, since that is the only block that can draw the page even if
there are no results at all. In this case your
<TT
CLASS="filename"
>search.htm</TT
> would look like this:
</P
><DIV
CLASS="informalexample"
><P
></P
><A
NAME="AEN5706"
></A
><PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
> <!--variables-->
[your configuration]
<!--/variables-->
<!--top-->
<html>
<body>
<table>
<tr colspan="2">
<td>[logo, banner ads]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[search form]</td>
<td>
<!--/top-->
[all other blocks in <TT
CLASS="filename"
>search.htm</TT
> except "bottom"]
<!--bottom-->
[closing elements like the mnogosearch link
and a link to the webmaster]
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
<!--/bottom-->
</PRE
><P
></P
></DIV
><P
>The individual blocks can be formatted
individually as long as that formatting is closed within each
block. Thus, nothing stops you from doing things like
</P
><DIV
CLASS="informalexample"
><P
></P
><A
NAME="AEN5710"
></A
><PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
> <!--error-->
<table>
<tr><td bgcolor"red">
<font color="#ffffff">
[error variables]
</font>
</tr><td>
</table>
<!--error-->
</PRE
><P
></P
></DIV
><P
>as long as such formatting is opened and closed
properly within the same block.
</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="sect2"
><H2
CLASS="sect2"
><A
NAME="html-forms"
>Forms considerations</A
></H2
><P
>Although the modern browsers can handle forms that
stretch over different tables, writing this kind of forms
abuses the standards and is usually considered as bad
<ACRONYM
CLASS="acronym"
>HTML</ACRONYM
>. Unless you really can't avoid it,
using this style is not recommended.
</P
><P
>For example,</P
><DIV
CLASS="informalexample"
><P
></P
><A
NAME="AEN5718"
></A
><PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
> <table>
<tr><td>
<form>
<input type="text" name="something">
<input type="radio" name"button1">
<input type="radio" name"button2">
</form>
</tr></td>
</table>
</PRE
><P
></P
></DIV
><P
>is fine, but </P
><DIV
CLASS="informalexample"
><P
></P
><A
NAME="AEN5721"
></A
><PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
> <table>
<tr><td>
<form>
<input type="text" name="something">
</tr></td>
</table>
<table>
<tr><td>
<input type="radio" name"button1">
<input type="radio" name"button2">
</form>
</tr></td>
</table>
</PRE
><P
></P
></DIV
><P
>is <SPAN
CLASS="emphasis"
><I
CLASS="emphasis"
>not</I
></SPAN
>.
</P
><P
>Note that the input forms in <TT
CLASS="filename"
>search.htm</TT
>
can be changed at will. The default is drop-down menus, but nothing
stops you from using radio buttons or hidden input or text boxes.
For instance, where <TT
CLASS="filename"
>search.htm</TT
> says </P
><DIV
CLASS="informalexample"
><P
></P
><A
NAME="AEN5728"
></A
><PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
> Results per page:
<SELECT NAME="ps">
<OPTION VALUE="10" SELECTED="$ps">10
<OPTION VALUE="20" SELECTED="$ps">20
<OPTION VALUE="50" SELECTED="$ps">50
</SELECT>
</PRE
><P
></P
></DIV
><P
>you can very well substitute
</P
><DIV
CLASS="informalexample"
><P
></P
><A
NAME="AEN5731"
></A
><PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
> <input type="radio" name"ps" value="10">
<input type="radio" name"ps" value="20" checked>
<input type="radio" name"ps" value="50">
</PRE
><P
></P
></DIV
><P
>which will result in three radio buttons instead
of the drop-down menu, with <TT
CLASS="literal"
>20</TT
>
being the default page size.
</P
><P
>Note that you can also use the </P
><DIV
CLASS="informalexample"
><P
></P
><A
NAME="AEN5736"
></A
><PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
> <input type="hidden" name="XX" value="YY">
</PRE
><P
></P
></DIV
><P
>format if you want to set your own
default values without allowing the user to change them.
</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="sect2"
><H2
CLASS="sect2"
><A
NAME="html-rellinks"
>Relative links in <TT
CLASS="filename"
>search.htm</TT
></A
></H2
><P
>It might be worth mentioning that
<TT
CLASS="filename"
>search.htm</TT
> is parsed by
<SPAN
CLASS="application"
>search.cgi</SPAN
> which
usually resides in the <TT
CLASS="filename"
>/cgi-bin/</TT
> directory
of your Web server. When you open
<TT
CLASS="literal"
>http://site-name/cgi-bin/search.cgi</TT
>
in your browser, all <SPAN
CLASS="emphasis"
><I
CLASS="emphasis"
>relative</I
></SPAN
>
links are considered as relative to the
<TT
CLASS="filename"
>/cgi-bin/</TT
> directory.
Therefore, if you have a file system structure like
</P
><DIV
CLASS="informalexample"
><P
></P
><A
NAME="AEN5749"
></A
><PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
> /var/www/images/
/var/www/html/
/var/www/cgi-bin/
</PRE
><P
></P
></DIV
><P
>the correct relative link from <TT
CLASS="filename"
>search.cgi</TT
>
to the images in <TT
CLASS="filename"
>/images/</TT
> will be
</P
><P
><TT
CLASS="literal"
><img src="../images/image.gif"></TT
></P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="sect2"
><H2
CLASS="sect2"
><A
NAME="html-searchform"
>Adding a small Search form to the other pages of your site</A
></H2
><P
>To add a small search form to any of your pages,
you can put the following code:
</P
><DIV
CLASS="informalexample"
><P
></P
><A
NAME="AEN5759"
></A
><PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
> <FORM METHOD="GET" ACTION="/cgi-bin/search.cgi">
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="q" VALUE="">
<INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Search!">
</FORM>
</PRE
><P
></P
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