Searching CUSTOMVAR

[jonnyatom5]

hi there

I'm building a site in Actinic V7.0.2 and wish to search through customvar's. I have set these up in 'Advanced | Custom Properties' and assigned them on the product (in the properties tab) making them searchable but when I do a search they don't appear in the search results.

Does anyone have any ideas?

I have 'file name' and 'Use file content' unticked in the properties tab.

Regards Garry

[jonnyatom5]

Frustrating

Can I search by a CUSTOMVAR so that if someone types in text that is used within a CUSTOMVAR it comes up in the search results.

Garry (really frustrated)

[jonnyatom5]

Even more frustrated

Ok I've discovered that if the same word is in the title or description then the product appears in the search results (as you'd expect), when you go to the product via the search link both CUSTOMVAR and the word in the description that were searched for are highlighted.

Now why can't I just search for a word in the customvars? Arrrgghhhh

Garry

[cdicken]

Hi there

You need to go to 'View | Search Settings | Searchable Properties' to set up how custom properties are searched on in your store.

This is described in the help in 'Online Store Features | Searching on Product Properties'

[jonnyatom5]

Done that

Hi Chris, thanks for replying

I've been through all that is explained in the 'Help' and still I cannot get the correct search to work.

It is quite simple what I require, I wish to type a word into the search box and for it to be picked up in the CUSTOMVAR, no dropdowns or radio buttons etc, just a nice simple search which also works from the simple search.

Is this possible?

Regards Garry

[cdicken]

Can I search by a CUSTOMVAR so that if someone types in text that is used within a CUSTOMVAR it comes up in the search results.

Could you make sure you have 'Properties' selected in the 'Results' tab - this will ensure that the marching custom properties will be shown.

when you go to the product via the search link both CUSTOMVAR and the word in the description that were searched for are highlighted.

If you don't want search terms highlighted then de-select 'Highlight Located Text' in 'View | Search Settings | Results'.

It is not possible to widen the keyword search (or the simple search) to include searching the custom property values. It is, however, possible to use a text field on the search page for people to enter their search terms for searching CUSTOMVARs.

To do this,

1. Open Act_SearchList.html
2. Replace the code there with <INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="NETQUOTEVAR:NAME" VALUE="" SIZE="30" MAXLENGTH="255">
3. Save the template
4. In the 'Searchable Properties' tab, set up Actinic to search on custom properties and use 'List' as the 'HTML Representation'.

This will use a text field as the search tool for customvars - which you could use instead of the standard keyword search field if you want. To do this, you just need to edit Act_SearchTemplate.html.
Replace
<input type=TEXT name="SS" size=40 maxsize=255>
with
<input type="hidden" name="SS" value="">

Then replace:
NETQUOTEVAR:SEARCHCOMBINE
<input type=RADIO name="TB" CHECKED value="A">
NETQUOTEVAR:SEARCHANDSTRING
<input type=RADIO name="TB" value="O">
NETQUOTEVAR:SEARCHORSTRING&nbsp;NETQUOTEVAR:SEARCHCOMBINEINFO

with

<input type="hidden" name="TB" value="A">

[jonnyatom5]

Eureka

Hiya Chris

we've done it. It's something to with putting the CUSTOMVAR info in the Meta Keywords for the section and turning on

"Add All Parent Section Contents to Product Text when Indexing"

in 'Search Setting | Search Option'

This produces exactly what we want via both Search and simple search.

All it'll take is a little database manipulation to duplicate the CUSTOMVAR fields into the Meta Keyword column. I suppose this won't hurt search engine indexing as well (an added bonus)

Thanks for the help and I hope this helps anyone with the same problem

regards Garry

[bentleybloke]

I have set this up as Chris suggested above and it works nicely, thanks.

However, I have a couple of questions.

The I using the customvar to store original brand part numbers. One particular brand has current and old (superceeded) part numbers entered in the customvar, where the ones in brackets are the superceeded ones.

e.g. 12345C (12345B) (12345A)

Searching for 12345C returns a result, searching for 12345C (12345B) (12345A) returns a result, but searching for 12345B or 12345A with or without brackets returns the no products can be found message. Is there a way round this, so that if someone had an old part number they could enter it and still get a result?

The other question is... is it possible to have one text field to search more than one customvar?

For example for one product there could be 5 different suppliers, each with 5 different part numbers (or more if there are old part numbers too). Its a bit of a fag having 5 text fields and expecting someone to put the right search query in the correct one!?

[Nadeem]

Hi there

I'm afraid this is not possible. Our search script will only matches text starting with the first character in the string. A workaround for this is to use the noscript within the full description.

So you could have '!!<<noscript>12345B 12345A</noscript>>!!'
Without the quotes. This will allow you to find the products number and they will not been seen on the site.

Kind Regards

[bentleybloke]

Thanks for that...

Kind of negates the hole searching customvar thing if everything has to be repeated in the description box though.

Is there no way to tweek the script so it will produce a result from anywhere in the string?

[cdicken]

I'm afraid it's not a script - it's to do with how the actual application generates the search index files.

I'll add this to the wish list for you.