Paginated search results and custom url

19 May 2010

I wanted for this blog a search feature, but I had some prerequisites for it :

The search url could be bookmarked
It should be paginated
It should play well with my custom url starting with /blog

Defining custom urls

Here are the two routes I defined in my routes.php

Router::connect('/blog/search/:keyword',
    array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'search'),
    array(
        'pass' => array('keyword'),
        'keyword' => '[^/]+'
    )
);
Router::connect('/blog/search/*', array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'search'));

Going to/blog/search/*keyword* will start a search on the keyword, while going to /blog/search/would display a search form.

Writing the method

I started by creating a searchaction in my PostController, then creating a form submitting to this action, with a keywordinput field.

In the searchmethod, the first thing I do is checking if some POST data is submitted (coming from the search form). If so, I redirect to the same page, but passing the keywordas first parameter.

If no keywordis passed nor data submitted, I'll display a simple search form.

And finally if a keywordis specified, I'll do a paginated search on every posts whose nameor textcontains the keyword.

function search() {
  // We redirect to get it in GET mode
  if (!empty($this->data)) {
    return $this->redirect(array('keyword' => urlencode($this->data['Post']['keyword'])));
  }

  // Search index
  if (empty($keyword)) {
    return $this->render('search_index');
  }

  // Adding conditions to name and text
  $keyword = urldecode($keyword);
  $this->paginate = Set::merge(
    $this->paginate,
    array(
      'conditions' => array(
        'AND' => array(
          'OR' => array(
            'Post.name LIKE' => '%'.$keyword.'%',
            'Post.text LIKE' => '%'.$keyword.'%'
          )
        )
      )
    )
  );
  // Getting paginated result
  $itemList = $this->paginate();

  $this->set(array(
    'keyword' => $keyword,
    'itemList' => $itemList
  ));
}

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Search

Paginated search results and custom url

Defining custom urls

Writing the method