USiteSearch 0.664.0

Add full text search to your Umbraco website in 15 minutes flat

I build websites using the Umbraco content management system, and one feature that is often necessary is a site search. While you can use Examine for this purpose, my sites often require a Google-like search rather than a search specific to the site's content. Additionally, I need a user-friendly interface for the search and syntax highlighting to make the results more readable.

In the past, I have copied and pasted my site search code between projects, but this has not been efficient and has resulted in bugs and other issues. To improve the quality of my code and make it easier to use, I have decided to add unit and integration tests and turn it into a system that can be easily installed in just 15 minutes. This system is called USiteSearch.

Earlier versions of the code used in USiteSearch can be seen in action on Mysterious Universe which has a total of 20,000 blog posts.

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Installation

Let's get USiteSearch working in a sample Umbraco website so you can see exactly how it works. Installing on the sample site will teach you how to install it in your own site. Set up should take no longer than 15 minutes.

Note: This help can also be viewed as a YouTube tutorial if you prefer watching a video.

Installation steps

We will install USiteSearch on an Umbraco 10 (or 11) website to show how it works.

1. Clone this basic Umbraco 12 website. The website comes with an embedded database so it should run without further modifications. The back office login for the website is:

   Username: admin@admin.com
   Password: admin12345

   Alternatively clone the same website in Umbraco 11 website or the same website in Umbraco 10 website if you are using Umbraco 10.

   Check the website runs and you can log in to the backoffice.

2. Install the latest nuget USiteSearch package via the NuGet package manager:

3. Unzip this zip file site files

   Unzip the files in the project folder.

   This installs some css, images, javascript and a partial view. The files it installs are show below:

4. Run the project to view the sample website. Now let's add USiteSearch. Open startup.cs and add this using statement at the top of the file:

    using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Notifications;
    using UmbracoExtensions;
   
    //add this line
    using USiteSearch.Notifications;
   

   Add AddUSiteSearch to ConfigureServices:

    public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
    {
    	services.AddUmbraco(_env, _config)
    		.AddBackOffice()
    		.AddWebsite()
    		.AddComposers()
    		.AddNotificationHandler<UmbracoApplicationStartingNotification, Bundling>()
    		.AddUSiteSearch(services, "app_data/USiteSearch", 9) //add this
    		.Build();
    }
   

   This configures the USiteSearch to a LuceneProvider search provider:

   app_data/USiteSearch - is the relative path where Lucene will store data in the application.

   9 - When displaying search results, the number of words to display each side of a word match.

   Note the line AddNotificationHandler which adds bundling via Bundling.cs. This is an addition to the base Umbraco project but is something you should probably be adding for all css and javascript. Read more about Umbraco Bundling

5. Next we need to enable the css and javascript used by USiteSearch. Add these lines in views/master.cshtml in the head section:

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="usitesearch-css-bundle" />
    <script src="usitesearch-js-bundle"></script>
   

   This includes these files via bundling:

   ~/USiteSearch/css/usitesearch.min.css and
   ~/USiteSearch/scripts/usitesearch.js

6. Add this line in Views/master.cshtml under the body tag:

   @Html.Partial("~/Views/Partials/USiteSearch/USiteSearch.cshtml")
   

7. Next we need to index the site, to do this, log into the backoffice and save and publish each of the pages.
   This will create the lucene index under the app_data folder as specified in startup.cs:

   This folder can be deleted to clear the search.

8. In order to engage the search, we need to give a front end element the attribute id="site-search"
   This has been done for you in master.cshtml:

    <li>
    	<a href="#" id="site-search" title="Search the site">Site search</a>
    </li>
   

   Click on the element and you should see the search bar, enter the term animals. After typing a few characters you should see these results:

   Refine the search, search for animals lions. Note the results reduce and each search term is highlighted with 9 words either side of the word match. This is the variable we set earlier in startup.cs.

9. Search for the term play close and notice it matches all pages:

   This is because this text is in the margin. In order to remove this text from the search, add this tag to html elements you want excluded from the site search:

   Typically you would exclude the navigation, footer and common margins. You will need to save each page again to reindex these pages.

10. If you want to remove whole pages from the site search, add the property blockFromSearch to document types:

    This is already present in the sample project and when you check it on, pages will be removed from the search if you resave them after checking the option.