Still not searching product reference field

[JMK2]

It would seem that somehow we've caused it not to search the Product reference section at all now. I tried the following test: I place a field in Product Reference "This is a test". Then I tried to search for "This is a test", and I got nothing.


2003/11/17 23:57, 205.206.127.196, 0, 0, "this is a test"

I see it changes the entry to all lower case BTW.

[rmladden]

We did not do anything to affect that. It always coverted the search string to lower case. As usual, the advice is to delete the .fil files in your site folder and the server and refresh. Check that your word character set is ok.

Also the words "this", "is", "a" are in the stop list, so those words are never found.

[JMK2]

I forgot about that stop list, and I agree it would not make sense that we did anything to have it stop searching the Prod ref per se.

I'll delete those files and try another test and see what happens.

Thanks.

[JMK2]

Well kind of strange, I created a new record, 'pericardial tamponade' for product reference, and 'No Field' for Short Description. Now I get no result for either although i did a fresh import and a refresh. I'll place them in their own section and see what happens again.

I see, it's telling me to make it less than 20 characters, that's probably why.

OK, got that fixed and have been able to confirm that the search is not searching the product reference field at all. Is there a switch somewhere where searching on that field may have been turned off perhaps?

[rmladden]

The closest thing is Index Extended Product Info. Check that.

According to the help, what we were trying to do should have worked. I don't understand why it is not working at all now.

[JMK2]

That would index the Extended info page, not the Product Reference I would have thought, and I have no such pages, but I gave it a try and no luck.

[rmladden]

I tested on my own site and Actinic will not use a - to break up words. I don't know why you are having so many other problems.

[JMK2]

Thanks Bob,

But that would not appear to be our problem any longer. The problem would appear to be that it is not searching anything whatsoever in the Product reference field, '-' notwithstanding.

So now I'm trying to figure out why that may be, I'm sure if I could get it searching product reference again yur fix to the search.pm file would work.

[rmladden]

Take out my fix. If Actinic will not index words seperated by a - then it will never work. It should, but it doesn't.

That does not explain the big search problem.

[JMK2]

I already did take the fix out, and I've discovered something that is encouraging. It will not search all items in just one section called "computer equipment", it in fact is searching the other sections. There must be a switch somewhere that has turned that section off for being included in the search perhaps?

Also on your fix, just below it is another line that was originall in there:

$$psSearchString =~ s/\s+/ /go;

Should I comment it out if I use yours?

[rmladden]

Keep that. It takes out multiple spaces. I think my fix is hopeless without being able to modify the indexing.

Is the section hidden on the web site?

[JMK2]

Yes, it would appear that the fix is not doing anything. If I place the following string into a section that I know can be searched:

Fusion-asdf99

and try the following search terms:
Fusion-asdf99
asdf99

I get nothing.

If I try "fusion" then I get a result. it would appear that although it is "looking" for the distinct word "asdf99" it is not "finding" "asdf99" because it still sees the "-".

In that case it looks like I'd be better off to place the "-"back into the list of search strings.

Oh, and that section is not hidden. It is broken into subsections, 50 items to a subsection for a total of about 3500 items.

[JMK2]

Well Bob,

For the time being I decided it would be easiest to dig a lateral hole: I got Excel to replace all the "-" with a blank in the csv source file.

Thanks for all the help.

[NormanRouxel]

Now that this threads in the Guinness Book of Records for its prize winning length, I though I'd throw in my thoughts.

If you're able to process the csv file then why not do this:-

Take your product reference column, copy to a new column (say SREF) with the "-" replaced by spaces. Now make a new Description column that contains the Original Description + "!!<<noscript>>!!" + SREF + "!!<</noscript>>!!"

e.g. If the text was "Wowza Product" and the Reference was "AB-CD-XYZ1234" you'd generate a description field like this:-

Wowza Product!!<<noscript>>!!AB CD XYZ1234!!<</noscript>>!!

and Actinic will happy index all the words there but the customer won't see the bits inside the <noscript> tag.

When importing use the original product reference for your catalog but this extended description for the text and there you are.

This way you get the list of bits invisibly inserted into the product description where the original search scripts can operate on them.

Norman

[JMK2]

heh, heh, thanks Norman, didn't I see you on Bargain Hunt once too (could you be the new host Jan has mentioned)?

Wow, now that's an interesting thought. It may exactly address one of my main problems which is the distributor gives us a very scant description to work with. For example, Asus motherboards, the only place they have the actual motherboard model number is embedded in their own proprietary part number (my Product Reference) and that is the number that uses all the "-" in it. As it would make sense if you're looking for an Asus motherboard the first thing you would do is search for the model number of the board you want, so ths may be my solution.

Right now I get the distributors data in a csv file. I dynamically link it to my own xls file wherein I add other products from other suppliers. Then I save that file as a csv that is used as the import source for the catalog. Bit of a pain in that I cannot massage the data in the xls file because it contains dynamic links and appears to 'see' only the link info and not the actual source data in each cell, but I can do it in the last csv file manually each time.

Thanks, I'll let you know how it goes.