Enhancing search results

You can either select Enable Category Support from the ColdFusion Administrator, or write a cfcollection tag that uses the category attribute. By enabling category support, you create a collection that contains a Verity Parametric Index (PI).

<cfcollection  
    action = "action" 
    collection = "collectionName" 
    path = "path_to_verity_collection" 
    language = "English" 
    categories = "yes">

For more information on using the cfcollection tag to create Verity collections with support for categories, see cfcollection in the CFML Reference.

When you index a collection with support for categories enabled, do the following:

• Specify a category name using the category attribute. The name (or names) that you provide identifies the category so that users can specify searches on the documents that the collection contains. For example, you create five categories named taste, touch, sight, sound, and smell. When performing a search, users could select from either a pop-up menu or check box to search within one or more of the categories, thereby limiting their search within a given range of topics.

  <cfindex collection="#Form.IndexColl#" 
      action="update" 
      extensions=".htm, .html, .xls, .txt, .mif, .doc, .pdf" 
      key="#Form.IndexDir#" 
      type="path" 
      urlpath="#Form.urlPrefix#" 
      recurse="Yes" 
      language="English" 
      category="taste, touch, sight, sound, smell">

• Specify a hierarchical document tree (like a file system tree) within which you can limit searches, when you use the categoryTree attribute. With the categoryTree attribute enabled, ColdFusion limits searches to documents contained within the specified path.

  To use the categoryTree attribute, you specify a hierarchical document tree by listing each category as a string, and separating them using forward slashes (/). The tree structure that you specify in a search is the root of the document tree from which you want the search to begin. The type=path attribute appends directory names to the end of the returned value (as it does when specifying the urlpath attribute).

  Note: You can specify only a single category tree.

  <cfindex collection="#Form.IndexColl#" 
      action="update" 
      extensions=".htm, .html, .xls, .txt, .mif, .doc, .pdf" 
      key="#Form.IndexDir#" 
      type="path" 
      urlpath="#Form.urlPrefix#" 
      recurse="Yes" 
      language="English" 
      category="taste, touch, sight, sound, smell" 
      categoryTree="human/senses/taste">

For more information on using the cfindex tag to create Verity collections with support for categories, see cfindex in the CFML Reference.

When searching data in a collection created with categories, you specify category and categoryTree. The values supplied to these attributes specify the category to be searched for the specified search string (the criteria attribute). The category attribute can contain a comma-separated list of categories to search. Both attributes can be specified at the same time.

<cfsearch collection="collectionName"  
    name="results" 
    maxrows = "100" 
    criteria="search keywords" 
    category="FAQ,Technote" 
    categoryTree="Docs/Tags">

To search collections that contain categories, you use the cfsearch tag, and create an application page that searches within specified categories. The following example lets the user enter and submit the name of the collection, the category in which to search, and the document tree associated with the category through a form. By restricting the search in this way, the users are better able to retrieve the documents that contain the information they are looking for. In addition to searching with a specified category, this example also makes use of the contextHighlight attribute, which highlights the returned search results.

<cfparam name="collection" default="test-pi"> 
 
<cfoutput> 
<form action="#CGI.SCRIPT_NAME#" method="POST"> 
    Collection Name: <input Type="text" Name="collection" value="#collection#"> 
    <P> 
    Category: <input Type="text" Name="category" value=""><br> 
    CategoryTree: <input Type="text" Name="categoryTree" value=""><br> 
    <P> 
Search: <input Type="text" Name="criteria"> 
    <input Type="submit" Value="Search"> 
</form> 
</cfoutput> 
 
<cfif isdefined("Form.criteria")> 
    <cfoutput>Search results for: <b>#criteria#</b></cfoutput> 
    <br> 
    <cfsearch collection="#form.collection#" 
        category="#form.category#" 
        categoryTree="#form.categoryTree#"  
        name="sr" 
        status="s" 
        criteria="#form.criteria#" 
        contextPassages="3" 
        contextBytes="300" 
        contextHighlightBegin="<i><b>" 
        contextHighlightEnd="</b></i>" 
        maxrows="100"> 
    <cfdump var="#s#"> 
 
    <cfoutput> 
    <p>Number of records in query: #sr.recordcount#</P> 
    </cfoutput> 
 
    <cfdump var="#sr#"> 
 
    <cfoutput Query="sr"> 
    Title: <i>#title#</i><br> 
    URL: #url#<br> 
    Score: #score#<br> 
    <hr> 
    #context#<br> 
    <br> 
    #summary#<br> 
    <hr> 
    </cfoutput> 
</cfif>

For more information on using the cfindex tag to create Verity collections with support for categories, see cfsearch in the CFML Reference.

You can retrieve the category information for a collection by using the cfcollection tag’s categoryList action.The categoryList action returns a structure that contains two keys:

Use the information returned by categoryList to display to users the number of documents available for searching, as well the document tree available for searching. You can also create a search interface that lets the user select what category to search within based on the results returned by categoryList.

<cfcollection  
    action="categoryList"  
    collection="collectionName" 
    name="info">  
 
<cfoutput>  
    <cfset catStruct=info.categories>  
    <cfset catList=StructKeyList(catStruct)>  
    <cfloop list="catList" index="cat"> Category: #cat# <br>  
        Documents: #catStruct[cat]#<br>  
    </cfloop> 
</cfoutput> 

To retrieve information about the categories contained in a collection, you use the cfcollection tag, and create an application page that retrieves category information from the collection and displays the number of documents contained by each category. This example lets the user enter and submit the name of the collection via a form, and then uses the categoryList action to retrieve information about the number of documents contained by the collection, and the hierarchical tree structure into which the category is organized.

<html>  
<head> 
    <title>Category information</title> 
</head> 
<body> 
<cfoutput> 
<form action="#CGI.SCRIPT_NAME#" method="POST"> 
    Enter Collection Name: <input Type="text" Name="collection"  
        value="#collection#"><br> 
    <input Type="submit" Value="GetInfo"> 
</form> 
</cfoutput> 
<cfif isdefined("Form.collection")> 
    <cfoutput> 
    Getting collection info... 
    <br> 
    <cfflush> 
    <cfcollection  
        action="categorylist"  
        collection="#collection#"  
        name="out"> 
    <br> 
    <cfset categories=out.categories> 
    <cfset tree=out.categorytrees> 
    <cfset klist=StructKeyList(categories)> 
    <table border=1> 
    <th>Category</th> <th>Documents</th> 
    <cfloop index="x" list="#klist#"> 
    <tr> 
        <td>#x#</td> <td align="center">#categories[x]#</td> 
    </tr> 
    </cfloop> 
    </table> 
    <cfset klist=StructKeyList(tree)> 
    <table border=1> 
    <th>Category</th> <th>Documents</th> 
    <cfloop index="x" list="#klist#"> 
    <tr> 
     <td>#x#</td> <td align="center">#tree[x]#</td> 
    </tr> 
    </cfloop> 
    </table> 
    </cfoutput> 
</cfif> 
</body>

For more information on using the cfcollection tag to create Verity collections with support for categories, see cfcollection in CFML Reference.