findinsite-ms Look and Feel

• Template files customise all the basic HTML for returned pages, with template variables updated depending on the results
• The language support can be changed or enhanced.
• The results can be reordered in various ways.
• If you want word counts on each hit page, you have to enable this.
• Alter the hits per results page from the default of 10.

These facilities are aimed at web site designers. For ultimate control, use the programmer interface Search API XML Web Service to retrieve the results and process as you wish.

Here is a full list of the available options:

Calling findinsite-ms

• You will usually add a small search form to each web page of your web site - see the calling findinsite-ms page for details.

• You can use the findinsite-ms localised search page as your Advanced search page if you want.  The URL for this page varies from case to case, but might be http://localhost/findinsite/search.aspx

  The look and feel of this search page can be changed using configurable template files as described below.

Template files

findinsite-ms gets the name of each file from the values set in the Control Panel Look and Feel section.  However, if any file is not available then findinsite-ms supplies a basic default value.

Each template file can contain any HTML.  However, each file is a template, so any instance of a findinsite-ms variable is replaced with a suitable value at runtime.  The heading and footer template files may contain Heading and Footer Variables.  The top and bottom template files may contain Top and Bottom Variables.  The results line template file should contain Result Line Variables. The error display template file should contain Error Display Variables.

Each template file may use %INCLUDE=...% directives to include other pages in the output, as described below. The included pages may be static files or dynamically generated. An included dynamic page (eg ASPX) is sent various findinsite-ms form variables.

CSS Styles

Although the findinsite-ms output is easily customised, various details are hard-coded. To let you alter these, findinsite-ms uses various preset stylesheet styles. The supplied default heading template includes inline definitions for these standard styles.

For example, if a template uses the %SEARCH_TEXT% variable then HTML like the following is generated:
<SPAN CLASS=fisSearchText>xxx</SPAN>
where xxx is the entered search text. The style fisSearchText is hard-wired into findinsite-ms. The default header template defines fisSearchText as follows:

<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
.fisSearchText { background: pink; font-family:monospace; }
</STYLE>

findinsite-ms uses several such styles, but the header template does not define styles for all of them, so no styling is used.

The styles that are used are listed in each section below.

Heading and Footer Variables

As well as ordinary HTML (of any sort), findinsite-ms replaces any instances of the following variable names with the described text.  If the description says that the text is localised then the text is taken from the language file for the user's preferred language.  See the findhead.htt and findfoot.htt files in the findinsite-ms work directory for examples of these variables in use.

Top and Bottom Results Variables

As well as ordinary HTML (of any sort), findinsite-ms replaces any instances of the following variable names with the described text.  If the description says that the text is localised then the text is taken from the language file for the user's preferred language.  See the findtop.htt and findbot.htt files in the findinsite-ms work directory for examples of these variables in use.

The default text for the top template is:

<TABLE WIDTH="100%" cellpadding=0 cellspacing='0'> <tr><td bgcolor="#ffffcc"><img height=1></td></tr> <tr><td bgcolor="#ffffcc"> %L_SEARCH_RESULTS_FOR% %SEARCH_TEXT%%FIELDS_TEXT% %L_STOP_WORDS% &nbsp;&nbsp;%L_SEARCH_SUMMARY% &nbsp;&nbsp; %L_PREV_SHEET% %L_NEXT_SHEET% (%TIME%) </td></tr></table>

The default text for the bottom template is:

<TABLE WIDTH="100%" cellpadding=0 cellspacing='0'> <tr><td bgcolor="#ffffcc"> %L_SEARCH_RESULTS_FOR% <SPAN style='background: pink;'><CODE>%SEARCH_TEXT%%FIELDS_TEXT%</CODE></SPAN> %L_STOP_WORDS% &nbsp;&nbsp;%L_HITS_TEXT%&nbsp;&nbsp; %L_PREV_SHEET% %SHEET_DECADE% %L_NEXT_SHEET% -&nbsp; %L_FIRST% %L_LAST% </td></tr> <tr><td bgcolor="#ffffcc"><img height=3></td></tr> </table>

Result Line Variables

The line file can contain any HTML.  However, it will mainly contain result variables, described in the list below.

The entire results line has the search words highlighted, using the style hilite.

Example line template

Here is an example of what this result will look like, in the middle of a results list:

3. findinsite-ms Control Panel config.htm How to use the online configuration screen of FindInSite 4. FindInSite rules for Word stemming and Synonyms rules.htm FindInSite rules for Word stemming and Synonyms

Error Display Variables

If findinsite-ms encounters a problem, it reports this using the contents of the error display file as its template. Possible problems include (a) the user entering no search text, (b) no hits being found, and (c) unexpected program errors.

The error display file can contain any HTML, including the error display variables, described in the list below.

Template Include Directives

Use the following in a findinsite-ms template file (eg findhead.htt) to include the contents of file header.htt in the findinsite-ms output.

%INCLUDE=header.htt%

A template file can refer to an ASPX file if you want, eg:

%INCLUDE=head.aspx%

Include file form variables

The following excerpt from an ASP.NET file indicates how the form variables can be used - however see below for details of charset considerations.

SearchText <%=Request.Params["SearchText"]%><br>
SheetNo <%=Request.Params["SheetNo"]%><br>
ResultsPerSheet <%=Request.Params["ResultsPerSheet"]%><br>

The following form variables are available as strings, and valid as indicated. The "SearchText", "Title" and "Abstract" strings are made HTML-safe for printing out in a browser.

Include file parameter charset considerations

The form variables passed to the include file are encoded in the UTF-8 charset. If the include file is in the findinsite-ms application directory then the form variables are assumed to be in the "ISO-8859-1" charset. This is set in the application Web.Config file - do not change this setting please. Instead use the following C# code to get the form variables correctly.

This complete example lists all supplied form parameters. The getFormParameter() method handles the charset conversion correctly.

<%@ Page Language="c#" AutoEventWireup="true" %>

<script Language="c#" runat=server>
private string getFormParameter( string name)
{
	string rv = Request.Form[name];
	if( rv==null || rv.Length==0) return null;
	byte[] rvb = Request.ContentEncoding.GetBytes(rv);
	char[] rvc = Encoding.UTF8.GetChars(rvb);
	rv = new String(rvc);
	return rv;
}
</script>


All parameters:<br>
<%
foreach( string param in Request.Form)
{
	Response.Write(param+"="+getFormParameter(param)+"<br>");
}
%>

Note: in the above code, ASP.NET performs cross-site scripting validation on all form variables. Some abstracts could cause such a failure.