The full-text search portlet

NOTE: we have this working on RT 4.0.2. It seems more recent RT releases changed the "Simple Search" page quite heavily and thus the portlet is not working correctly. I'll post a new portlet when I have the code corrected.

After the release of RT 4.0 we began investigating the migration from our 3.8.x RT installation.

Originally we had a mysql-based installation, and we included a full-text search engine based on Sphinx (see my IntegrateSphinx page on this wiki). We have grown very dependent on this feature.

We decided to switch to RT 4 and at the same time switch to Posgresql to take advantage of the built-in full-text search capabilities. Our users were very used to the custom portlet we wrote for Sphinx, so when the first testers began to try the new RT 4 system they were disappointed to have to rely on the confusing "simple search" page, and to have to add "fulltext:" every time.

So I thought "why not write a portlet again", and since I was on the task I decided to add the possibility to search by queue, requestor, owner. This way we will not have to use the "simple search" page again for... simple searches :-)

So here it is, for those who want to have a usable alternative to the "simple search" page and yet don't want to always use the advanced search.

Paste the content of the following box into a file. I called it FTSearch.

You have to put it in:

<your_rt_root>\local\html\Elements

<&|/Widgets/TitleBox, title => loc('Fulltext Search'), bodyclass => "" &>
    <script type="text/javascript">
    function MangleData()
    {
        // qui aggrego tutti i campi della prima form
        var textstring = '';
       
        for (i=3;i>0;i--) {
            var box = document.forms['fulltext-search'].elements[i];
            if (box.value) {
                textstring += box.value + ' ';
            }
        }
       textstring += 'fulltext:' + document.forms['fulltext-search'].elements[0].value 

        // popolo la seconda form con la stringa ricavata dalla prima
        document.forms['simple-search'].elements[0].value = textstring;

        // sottometto la seconda form invece della prima
        document.forms['simple-search'].submit();
    }
    </script>
    <form name="fulltext-search" action="#" method="get" onsubmit="MangleData(); return false">

        <table>
            <tr class="input-row">
                <td class="label"><&|/l&>Text</&>:</td>
                <td class="value">
                    <input type="text" size="40" name="Text" />
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr class="input-row">
                <td class="label"><&|/l&>Queue</&>:</td>
                <td class="value">
                    <& /Elements/SelectQueue, NamedValues => 1, Name => 'Queue' &>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr class="input-row">
                <td class="label"><&|/l&>Requestor</&>:</td>
                <td class="value">
                    <& /Elements/EmailInput, Name => 'Requestor', Size => '40' &>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr class="input-row">
                <td class="label"><&|/l&>Owner</&>:</td>
                <td class="value">
                    <& /Elements/SelectOwner, ValueAttribute => "Name", Name => "Owner" &>
                </td>
            </tr>
        </table>
        <div class="submit">
            <div class="buttons">
                <input class="button" type="submit" value="Submit" />
            </div>
        </div>
    </form>
    <form name="input2" action="/Search/Simple.html" method="get">
        <table>
            <tr class="input-row">
                <td class="value">
                    <input style="display:none" type="text" size="40" name="q" />
                </td>
            </tr>
        </table>
    </form>
</&>

Once the file is ready, you have to edit your RT_SiteConfig.pm file and modify (or add) the line that sets the HomepageComponents variable. If you don't have it, copy it from RT_Config.pm.

Add FTSearch to the list of components and save the file. Then clean the mason cache and restart your web server. In our case, the commands are:

> rm -rf /opt/rt4/var/mason_data/obj/*
> svcadm restart apache22

Then, in RT, click on the "EDIT" box in the top right corner and add FTSearch to your home page.

That's all! Hope you enjoy it.

Cris