Building a Better Search: Development of a WordPress Search API
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The document details the development of a WordPress search API as a Google Summer of Code project aimed at enhancing search functionality in WordPress. It outlines the project's phases, community interaction, and the rationale behind improving the existing limitations of the WordPress search engine. The proposed solution includes building an API to allow diverse search plugins and functionalities, ultimately empowering users and developers to customize their search experience.
Building a Better Search: Development of a WordPress Search API
- 1. Introduction Building a Better Search: Development of a WordPress Search API Justin Shreve
- 2. A Google Summer of Code Project Students worked with mentors (WordPress staff and community members) to develop and improve open source software Annual program (held from May to August) Phases: Community bonding time Interim period (development) Mid-term evaluations Interim Period (Write tests, documentation) Final evaluations
- 3. WordPress Community Interaction Mentor - Andy Skelton http://andyskelton.com/ User/Community Feedback Forums Issue Tracker Development Chats
- 4. Blogging to Improve the Project Summer of WordPress Development Blog http://gsoc2009wp.wordpress.com/ Weekly blog posts Progress reports and upcoming developments Invited comment and conversation ( http://gsoc2009wp.wordpress.com/author/justin/ ) “ In response to last night’s dev chat and a follow up by John Myrstad I have released a new version. The new release includes the ability to search by post tags and custom taxonomies (through register_taxonomy) as well as some improvements to the code and how the category selector on the advanced search page is showed…… ”
- 5. Selecting and Planning the Project View WordPress’ ideas list and Google Summer of Code documentation http://codex.wordpress.org/GSoC2009 With these ideas in mind assess WordPress’ current limitations Look to the community Look at feedback about WordPress features Focus on useful enhancements Chose to improve search functionality
- 6. Rationale Behind the Project Limitations of the Current WordPress Search Engine Both the blog and admin elements are very basic Very little admin control Can only search posts and pages Can not easily filter results by multiple metadata selections You can not do the following search: posts in category A with tags B and C; posts with author A and "text string” Does not support modern search capabilities AND, OR Stemming Spell Checking
- 7. The Solution Build an API to abstract common search functionality Offer a few suggestions for WordPress Search Google plugin Sphinx plugin Ultimately let users and developers choose how they want their content searched (through plugins) These plugins should address current limitations and fix them
- 8. Demo
- 9. A Closer Look at the API http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search/ The API’s Features Ability to drop in a new search plugin Supports a federated search index Offers easy methods for creating advanced search pages and other similar functionality ( e.g., pagination, sorting, and filtering ) Makes it easier for plugins to address current limitations
- 10. A Closer Look at the Search Plugin(s) Bundled Search Plugins Google Uses Google Custom Search to display results on a self-hosted page (Outsources search work to Google). MySQL Improves upon the current MySQL search by adding multiple content searching, multiple metadata selection and MySQL’s BOOLEAN syntax. Sphinx Offers a powerful alternative for those with slightly more access to their server Implements the tools available from the Sphinx open-source full-text engine http://www.sphinxsearch.com/
- 11. Creating a New Plugin Implement a new Search plugin in a few easy steps Create a WordPress file (e.g.: fulltext.php) with a class of the same name (fulltext_search) Implement a few variables for the API to communicate through List the features of the plugin to implement Will this engine have an advanced search page? Filters? Sorting option? Pagination? Does it need the search index? Implement just two required functions in the class find_results to query the database search() to format the results Add some activation code for the Search API to understand this is a Search Plugin
- 12. What the Future Holds Look to the community for further suggestions Monitor the issue tracker Monitor discussions from other sites (ThemeHybrid, Twitter, etc) Monitor WordPress Support forums Implement the API in the WordPress core Patch #10667