ASP Kitchen: Classic ASP Articles: Searching Index Server With ASP

Searching Index Server With ASP

Introduction

A previous article on ASPAlliance.com enthuses about Index Server. I’d agree with the author - Index Server makes it very straightforward to create search solutions that would cost many thousands of dollars to implement using alternative technologies.

This article describes what is required to use Index Server from within ASP. It assumes you have access to a web server running Internet Information Server 4.0 on Windows NT Server. The article is particularly suitable if, like me, you have Windows NT hosting with a company such as Alentus, who can supply Index Server support for a modest annual charge.

Note that Windows 2000 Server also has an equivalent to Index Server called Indexing Services, but there’s no guarantee that these code samples will work on Windows 2000. Incidentally, the code samples described in this article are available from a link at the end of the article.

Creating a search form

The first thing to do is to create a page containing a form in which the user can enter their search word or phrase. You can of course have a combined search form page and search results page, but I prefer to keep them separate. An example search form is shown below. This code should be saved as SearchForm.asp:

<form method="POST" action="SearchResults.asp" name="frmSearch">
<p>
<input type="text" maxlength="255" name="query" size="20" value>
<input type="submit" value="Search" name="B1">
</p>
</form>

As you can see from this HTML, it is a simple form that will post a single text field called query to the page called SearchResults.asp.

Creating a search results page

The following code can be used for a basic search results page. It should be saved as SearchResults.asp.

The first part of the search results page initialises variables and constants:

<%
Dim sSearchString
Dim oQuery

sSearchString = Request.Form("query")

Const SEARCH_CATALOG = "catalog_name"
%>

The search string was posted from the SearchForm.asp search form page, and the word or phrase to be searched for are extracted from the query item in the Request.Form collection.

The SEARCH_CATALOG constant is also defined. This name will vary so you will have to change it. If your site is hosted with a hosting company then they will usually set up a catalog on the Index Server for you, then let you know the name of your search catalog. If you are using your own web server, then you should be able to determine the catalog name from the Index Server Management Console. Describing how to set up and use Index Server catalogs is beyond the scope of this article, but further information is available in the IIS 4.0 reference guide (try http://localhost/iishelp/).

The next part of the search results page initialises the Index Server Query COM component which enables the search to be performed:

<%
Set oQuery = Server.CreateObject("IXSSO.Query")

oQuery.Catalog = SEARCH_CATALOG
oQuery.Query = "@all " & sSearchString & " AND NOT #path *_* AND NOT #path *downloads* AND NOT #path *images* AND NOT #filename *.class AND NOT #filename *.asa AND NOT #filename *.css AND NOT #filename *postinfo.html"
oQuery.MaxRecords = 200
oQuery.SortBy = "rank[d]"
oQuery.Columns = "DocAuthor, vpath, doctitle, FileName, Path, Write, Size, Rank, Create, Characterization, DocCategory"

Set oRS = oQuery.CreateRecordSet("nonsequential")
%>

Further details of the Query object’s methods and properties are to be found in the IIS 4.0 online documentation. The properties of the object set in the sample code above are as follows:

• Catalog: The name of the search catalog to be searched.

• Query: The query to be made. Note that the query in this example is comprised of the search string, plus a list of file and folder exclusions. It is important to remember that Index Server indexes content by using the file system, and therefore is able to index files you’d rather not allow users to search from the web. Examples include global.asa files, FrontPage configuration files (these folders have underscores in their names) and files such as Java class files and Cascading Style Sheets.

• MaxRecords: This property specifies the maximum number of search results that should be returned.

• SortBy: This specifies which column name the search results should sorted by. The usual setting for this is rank[d], i.e. sort results in descending order according to their similarilty to the search string.

• Columns: A list of column properties that should be returned in the search results. These will be discussed in further detail later on.

Finally, an ADO RecordSet is created from the records found for this search. The neat thing about Index Server is that the returned RecordSet of search results can be used in an almost identical fashion to RecordSets returned from databases. A list of results is, therefore, displayed simply by looping through this RecordSet and displaying fields from the RecordSet:

<%
If oRS.EOF Then
Response.Write "No pages were found for the query <i>" & sSearchString & "</i>"
Else
Do While Not oRS.EOF

Response.write "<b>FileName:</b> " & oRS("FileName") & "<br>"
Response.write "<b>doctitle:</b> " & oRS("doctitle") & "<br>"
Response.write "<b>Size:</b> " & oRS("Size") & "<br>"
Response.write "<b>Create:</b> " & oRS("Create") & "<br>"
Response.write "<b>Write:</b> " & oRS("Write") & "<br>"
Response.write "<b>Characterization:</b> " & oRS("Characterization") & "<hr>"

oRS.MoveNext
Loop
End If
%>

This code loops through the records corresponding to the matching documents found and displays some of the properties of each document. This is where the columns property of the Index Server Query are used: these specify the column names that are returned for each record. In the sample code above, FileName refers to the record’s name on disk.

	Warning!
Unfortunately the FileName property only contains the file's name in lower case. This can lead to problems if you are building a cross-platform search solution with operating systems that use case sensitive filenames (e.g. Unix and Linux).

doctitle corresponds to the document’s title (i.e. <title> tag if the document is HTML). Size is the size in bytes of the file on disk. Create is the date and time the document was created, whereas Write is the date and time the document was modified. Finally, Characterization is a summary of the document. The summary corresponds to the Description meta tag in HTML files, so it is worthwhile putting this tag into documents. If the Description tag isn’t present, Index Server will display the first one or two sentences from the document.

Finally at the bottom of the page the objects are released:

<%
Set oRS = nothing
Set oQuery = nothing
%>

An example screenshot of the search results page is below as described above, the page displays the FileName, doctitle, Size, Create and Characterization for each matching document:

As you can see the page is fairly basic, so a few cosmetic improvements would be required if the page was to be used on a production website. Further suggestions for improving the display of search results are in the article "More about Searching Index Server With ASP".

Code samples and working ASP pages

• Search form and search results sample ASP files (1.12 Kb ZIP file).

• Fully working versions of the search form and results pages described in this article may be accessed from my personal website.

Further reading

• Index Server Companion. The Index Server Companion allows Index Server to index content from remote websites and ODBC databases!

• MSDN's Indexing Services section.

• A complete list of column properties available to Index Server.

• Read all about Site Server 3.0's Search facility. If Index Server is too basic for your requirements, then the Search facility of Microsoft’s Site Server 3.0 has large number of additional features.

• Two articles on ASPAlliance.com describe how to use the Site Server Search facility to search custom Meta Tags, and also how to use ASP to view Site Server Search catalog properties.

• The search facility on my personal website was built using Index Server and ASP using code similar to that described in this article.

Useful Development Tools

ASP Documentation Tool™

Automatically creates technical documentation for ASP 2.0 and 3.0 web applications written in VBScript and JScript. Documentation for Microsoft Access, SQL Server 7/2000 databases and Visual Basic 6.0 components associated with the web application can also be incorporated into the reports. Documentation is created in HTML, HTML Help and plain text formats.

View Sample Output (HTML Help format).     View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (5.2Mb ZIP file).

.NET Documentation Tool

Automatically creates technical documentation for .NET Framework applications written in C# or VB.NET (including ASP.NET). Documentation for SQL Server 7/2000/2005 databases and C#/VB.NET components associated with the web application can also be incorporated into the reports. Documentation is created in HTML, HTML Help and plain text formats. Additional support for ASP.NET web applications. A useful alternative to NDoc!

View Sample Output (HTML Help format).     View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (3Mb ZIP file).

SQL Documentation Tool

The SQL Documentation Tool creates technical documentation for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, 2000 and 2005 databases. Technical documentation is created in HTML and HTML Help formats. The HTML Help format documentation is fully searchable and cross referenced. The SQL Documentation Tool documents SQL Server Tables, Views, Stored Procedures, Triggers, Table Relationships, Jobs and DTS Packages.

View Sample Output (HTML Help format).     View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (10.3Mb ZIP file).

VB Documentation Tool

The VB Documentation Tool creates technical documentation for Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 projects. Technical documentation is created in HTML and HTML Help formats. The HTML Help format documentation is fully searchable and cross referenced.

View Sample Output (HTML Help format).     View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (1Mb ZIP file).

The Website Utility

The Website Utility examines websites for errors and areas that need to be optimised for search engines by using a built in web crawling engine. Errors checked for include broken or moved hyperlinks, missing page titles and missing meta tags. It also generates HTML for use in creating website site maps (table of contents pages - like this one), and is able to create both client-side JavaScript search engines and server-side ASP search engines and ASP.NET search engines for a website.

View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (3Mb ZIP file).

Text Workbench

Text Workbench is a file search and replacement utility for text files and Microsoft Office documents. Make rapid file replacements on multiple files and folders full of files. Advanced replacement options include regular expressions support. It even works on remote file systems via FTP. A Regular Expression Laboratory allows advanced pattern matching and replacement expressions to be built and tested. This great utility will make your everyday development tasks much easier!

Download Trial Version (3Mb ZIP file; you have the option to either install directly from this link or save the file for later installation).

Indexing Service Companion

The Indexing Service Companion is a utility that extends the functionality of the Microsoft Windows Indexing Service so that it is able to index content from any remote website and also from ODBC compliant databases. As such it can be used as a low cost alternative to Sharepoint's Search Services.

View Product Documentation (119K ZIP file).     Try Sample Search Facility.     Download Trial Version (1.7Mb ZIP file).

ASP Spell Check

ASPSpellCheck is the easy way to add spell checking capabilities to your ASP or ASP.NET websites, Intranets and web applications. The utility allows you to add spell checking capabilities to any HTML text field or rich content editing text box. It works with all common web browsers, and there are no components or databases to install on the server.

Read ASPSpellCheck Review.     View ASPSpellCheck Examples.     Download Trial Version (3Mb ZIP file; you have the option to either install directly from this link or save the file for later installation).

Author details

Brett Burridge has worked as a web developer since 1997 and has developed web applications for a range of corporations, start up busiensses and educational establishments.

Brett is presently employed as an Internet developer and technical writer through his own company, Winnersh Triangle Web Solutions Limited. The company produces a number of innovative products, including a range of software documentation tools, which include the ASP Documentation Tool™, the .NET Documentation Tool for VB.NET and C#, and the SQL Server Documentation Tool. Other products include The Website Utility, which functions as a website error checker, search engine optimizer and ASP/ASP.NET search engine builder application.

As well as the ASPAlliance, Brett has written articles for Ariadne.ac.uk, ASPToday, the software documentation portal www.softwaredocumentation.info, and has contributed recipes to the ASP.NET Developer's Cookbook.    links

Outside web development, Brett is interested in travelling (here are my travel logs from New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo), digital photography (here's my photo gallery), tropical fishkeeping and collecting contemporary works of art by artists such as Doug Hyde.

Contact Brett by emailing

Article history

"Searching Index Server With ASP" published on ASPAlliance.com on 30 September 2001. Last revised 13 May 2003.

ASP Kitchen: Classic ASP Articles: Searching Index Server With ASP