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| Title | More about Searching Index Server With ASP |
| Description | Describes how to enhance a simple ASP script to search website content using Index Server or Indexing Service on Windows NT/2000 |
| Keywords | tutorial, example, vbscript, asp, active server page, index server, indexing services, microsoft index server |
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Home Articles More about Searching Index Server With ASP A previous article demonstrated how ASP could be used to create a web front-end to Index Server. While the search results page demonstrated in the article contained most of what is needed to create a results page, its formatting of the search results was pretty basic, as can be seen below:
Contrast this with the search results page from this website (shown below). This demonstrates what sort of formatting can be applied to the search results. If you want to see this page in action, try the search facility on this website . Improving the display of column properties As was described in the previous article, each search result contains a number of column properties . These contain information about each search result. In the previous article, the properties used were: FileName, doctitle, Size, Create and Characterization. As will be described below, each of these can be used to provide useful information in search results pages. Hyperlinking the search result's filename The FileName column property contains the search result's filename (e.g. default.htm). However, a more useful column property is vpath , which also contains the file's path as well as its filename (e.g. /financial/reports/june2002/default.htm). Once the file's path is know, it is straightforward to hyperlink the search result's URL using something like the following: Const SERVER_URL = http://www.brettb.com Response.write b URL: /b a href= SERVER_URL oRS( vpath ) SERVER_URL oRS( vpath ) /a br A common convention when presenting search results is to hyperlink the document's name to its URL. Index Server uses the doctitle column property to store the document's name): Const SERVER_URL = http://www.brettb.com Response.write b URL: /b a href= SERVER_URL oRS( vpath ) oRS( doctitle ) /a br Displaying the search result's file size The Size column property contains the size of the file in bytes. A small formula can be used to display the file's size in Kilobytes, which is often a better unit of measure for file sizes: Response.write b Size: /b Round(CInt(oRS( Size ))/1024, 1) K br Displaying the document creation and modification dates The creation and modification date and time for files are contained within the Create and Write column properties, respectively. These can be formatted to display a more user friendly date by use of the FormatDateTime VBScript function as shown below: Response.write b Create: /b FormatDateTime(oRS( Create ), 1) br Response.write b Write: /b FormatDateTime(oRS( Write ), 1) br Further document properties A number of other document properties may be of interest, such as HitCount (the number of words matching the query that were found in the file), and Rank (how closely the file matched the query). A more detailed description of the Rank column property is in the following section . A complete listing of column properties is available here (it is also available in the IIS 4.0 documentation). Many properties are only of relevence if Microsoft Office documents are being indexed. Remember that if you wish to use any additional columns then they must be listed in the Columns property of the Index Server Query COM component, e.g. oQuery.Columns = DocAuthor, vpath, doctitle, FileName, Path, Write, Size, Rank, Create, Characterization, HitCount Displaying a file's rank The Rank column property is used as a measure of how closely a document returned by Index Server matched the search query. Rank ranges between 0 and 1000, with 1000 being the closest match. The calculation of rank is fairly complex, but a good explanation is available. To summarise, rank depends on the number of times the query terms appear in the document, as well as the number of times the query terms appear in the Index Server catalog. In the search catalog on my own personal site, searches for ASP will return results with a low rank, because that word appears frequently (since I am an ASP developer and have lots of pages about ASP). By contrast, searches for tomato will return a high rank for the page about my biotechnology career, since it is the only page to contain numerous references to tomatoes. In a search results page, rank can be displayed as a percentage by simply dividing the Rank by 10: Response.write b Rank: /b CInt(oRS( Rank )/10) % br Alternatively, it can be displayed graphically. There are a number of ways of achieving this. On my personal search page, the results are accompanied by a graphic showing from 0 to 10 filled bars, according to the rank. So a document matching with a ranking of between 700 and 800 will get 8 bars, and therefore an 80% ranking. Obviously the number of filled bars can only give an approximate ranking, but it is there as a visual aid so an accurate ranking is not important. If you want to use the method I use, the code is below. The code should of course be executed for each page in the search results. iCurrentRanking = oRS( Rank ) 'Retrieve the search ranking for this particular search result If iCurrentRanking 900 Then iRanking = 10 ElseIf iCurrentRanking 800 Then iRanking = 9 ElseIf iCurrentRanking 700 Then iRanking = 8 ElseIf iCurrentRanking 600 Then iRanking = 7 ElseIf iCurrentRanking 500 Then iRanking = 6 ElseIf iCurrentRanking 400 Then iRanking = 5 ElseIf iCurrentRanking 300 Then iRanking = 4 ElseIf iCurrentRanking 200 Then iRanking = 3 ElseIf iCurrentRanking 100 Then iRanking = 2 Else iRanking = 1 End If sCurrentRankingAltTag = (iRanking * 10) percent match 'Create an ALT tag for the ranking image The appropriate rank image is then inserted using the following ASP: img src= images/ %=iRanking% bars.png alt= %=sCurrentRankingAltTag% width= 80 height= 17 Note that the images are in the images sub-folder, and are named from 1bars.png to 10bars.png. Examples are shown below: Site Map All content is © 1995 - 2006 Brett Burridge |
| Image Alt Tags | Brettb.Com Microsoft Certified Professional Output from SearchResults.asp Output from an improved SearchResults.asp - as taken from my personal website 1bars.png, representing 10% match 4bars.png, representing 40% match 8bars.png, representing 80% match 10bars.png, representing 100% match View Sample Output (HTML Help format) View Sample Output (HTML Format) Download Trial Version View Sample Output (HTML Help format) View Sample Output (HTML Format) Download Trial Version View Sample Output (HTML Help format) View Sample Output (HTML Format) Download Trial Version View Product Documentation Try Sample Search Facility Download Trial Version View Sample Output (HTML Help format) View Sample Output (HTML Format) Download Trial Version ASP Documentation Tool - Free Trial Available! 1000MB and 40GB for $7.95 a month! |
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