PicoSearch FAQ: Multiple Search Fields

> FAQs
> New Features
> What is PicoSearch?
> PicoSearch Glossary
> Sample Customers
> License

Yes! Combo searching (as we call it) was suggested to us by a user, and we were glad to support it because it's such a great idea. Searching multiple inputs is one of the tricks that is easily supported by our Boolean engine. The essential idea is that you can call your search engine with more than one term input, so that one search button can go find the results for several dropdown boxes and/or text boxes in combination. The multiple queries will be strung together logically, with unused ones being ignored, and voila! Your users will get search results similar to what the fields of a database query form would return.

Of course PicoSearch is not a database indexer or searcher explicitly. But if you set up your links and pages appropriately, with one HTML document per data entry, you'll have in this way a nice product catalog or information records retrieval system. Each search unit in the combo could even be a standardized field and value pair, quoted when searched to hold together as a phrase, such as "State: New York" or "Date: Feb-09-2000". You should experiment to find and stick with the phrase formats that will work for you and your search engine, because it's up to you to keep these words together. When you're done, you'll have database accuracy without the usual database hassles or costs!

Now for the details. We'll assume that you have some basic HTML understanding, and you already know that you can get all the code for your PicoSearch searching box from the link in your account manager "How to Add a Search Box". This is where you should begin. The additional inputs you will be adding should all go within the scope of the FORM tags, since that is where the call to PicoSearch is made. What you want to do is retain a single <input type="submit" name="search" /> for the button, and decide whether or not you want to keep the plain <input type="text" name="query" /> for a user input query box (compare with a qAndAll input type below). Then, you want to insert additional inputs, most likely a few dropdown boxes that you will preset for quick querying values, as in the following example:

<select name="qAndExact1"> <option value="" selected="selected">-- Pick a Product -- </option> <option value="product: chair">Chair</option> <option value="product: table">Table</option> <option value="product: foot stool">Foot Stool</option> </select>

<select name="qAndExact2"> <option value="" selected="selected"> -- Pick a Material -- </option> <option value="material: oak">Oak</option> <option value="material: maple">Maple</option> <option value="material: steel">Steel</option> <option value="material: plastic">Plastic</option> </select>

These would then appear as additional information inputs next to your main search box and button, and they will contribute their selections to the search launch as long as they are within the scope of your original cut-and-paste search code.

More search terms:

When you hit the search button for this example, any selected non-empty value (the default unselected choice is empty) will be added to the rest of a search with the + sign, so that the term or phrase must be found on any matching documents. This means that if someone typed in italian and selected the chair from the dropdown, the total query would be italian +"product: chair". If they selected the foot stool, the total query would be italian +"product: foot stool". These queries would then work great in a site that had separate documents for each showcased product, where a typical document said something like "Product: Chair. Material: Oak. Comments: What a great Italian design!"

You can see now why it would be a good organizational practice to keep critical field names like product: next to key words, so that you won't get false hits from the same words being used elsewhere. Otherwise your user looking for a chair might get the following false result; "Sofa. Italian. Looks great next to the chair!"

Notice also that the queries mentioned above don't enforce the user's keyword of italian, but only will tend to bring up Italian matches first. To absolutely require Italian in the returns, you would want a total query of +italian +"product: foot stool". This would happen if the name of the user's input text was itself an And type, which it certainly can be set for (see qAndAll input type below).

The types and rules of different inputs for combo query building are as follows. Choose the additional input names that suit your needs, and be sure to use each name only once. If you need to specify a quoted phrase within the VALUE="..." attribute of an input, use %22 so as to not end the HTML value prematurely. In this way you can build up your querying form on your own web pages. If you have a paid account, you can put this form into your result page template as a custom search box or you can direct users back to the search form on your site. You can have as many input arguments of the following names as long as they start with the name and the ending is unique, for example qAppend1 and qAppend2 or qAppend1b, but not another qAppend1.

qAppend: any INPUT or SELECT field name starting with qAppend will be appended without modification onto the combined search. No other processing is done, so you must be certain that what you intend is specified in the value. Ex: name=qAppend2 value="+stock -%22stock market%22" => Search: +stock -"stock market"
qAndExact: any INPUT or SELECT field name starting with qAndExact will be appended as a single required term or phrase onto the combined search using the + sign. Quotes will be added around multiple words as needed to make a phrase. Ex: name=qAndExact4 value="stock market" => Search: +"stock market"
qNotExact: any INPUT or SELECT field name starting with qNotExact will be appended as a single excluded term or phrase onto the combined search using the - sign. Quotes will be added around multiple words as needed to make a phrase. Ex: name=qNotExact1 value="stock market" => Search: -"stock market"
qAndAll: any INPUT or SELECT field name starting with qAndAll will be appended onto the combined search with the + sign added to every term or phrase which is not already within parentheses or modified by its own boolean (AND, OR, NOT, +, -). This property is good for lists of required terms in a dropdown, and also makes this input type a good candidate for replacing the plain name=query box input (the one that comes with the cut and paste). By using qAndAll instead of query, whatever the user types is likely to get correctly required in combination with other inputs, and this is probably what the user will expect in a total search form. Ex: name=qAndAll2 value="stock market" => Search: +stock +market
qAndAny: any INPUT or SELECT field name starting with qAndAny will be appended onto the combined search as a boolean list of alternates formatted as the conjunction of disjunctions, ie. AND ( term1 OR term2 OR term3 ). What's more, the qAndAny inputs, when used with the plain query input, will force the query input to combine in parentheses with this form, ie. if the user types two terms with nothing between them, the implication of one of them appearing will create a total search of (userterm1 OR userterm2) AND (term1 OR term2 OR term3). Other input types are not affected, so they may or may not combine well depending on how you have set things up. The conjunction of disjunctions is very powerful, allowing the logical buildup of any query, so this input type may be needed in complex search designs. Ex: name=qAndAny1 value="%22new york%22 Tokyo" ... name=qAndAny2 value="stock market" => Search: ("New York" OR Tokyo) AND (stock OR market)