Search Working Group

The Search Working Group is the Production Working Group responsible for the design and development of search in all its forms in Joomla.

Now that Finder has been integrated into Joomla 2.5 in the form of Smart Search, the time has come to look forward to Joomla 3.x and how we want search to work in that series. Having gained considerable experience of implementing an advanced search capability the Search Working Group will look at embedding search as a core API in the Joomla Platform and exploiting that API to deliver an improved search in future versions of the CMS.

Coordinators & PLT Contact

• The (temporary) coordinator for this working group is Chris Davenport (mailto:chris.davenport@joomla.org).
• The PLT Contact for this working group is Chris Davenport (mailto:chris.davenport@joomla.org).

Announcements

• Search Working Group update 31 May 2012

External resources

• Smart Search and Beyond (slides from presentation at J and Beyond 2012)

Communications

Primary communications channel is the Joomla CMS Development mailing list. If the volume of traffic becomes such that it might be deemed to be a nuisance by those not interested in search, then we will most likely start a separate mailing list.

Roadmap

The current plan is to focus on fixing outstanding issues for the 2.5.x series (and carrying those fixes forward into the 3.x branch as required). In parallel with that we should start to look at more extensive changes to be researched, coded and tested during the 3.x cycle for possible inclusion in Joomla 4.0.

• Short-term (address for 2.5.x and 3.x)
  • Multi-language fixes and improvements
    • 27511 - Smart Search in Japanese is not working
    • 27807 - Smart Search / Finder issues with languages with no spaces between words and double byte spaces Testers required
    • 28070 - Smart Search indexer fails when iconv function is not available Testers required
    • 28409 - Smart Search gives fatal error when searching with stemmer enabled
    • 28616 - Add French language stemmer to Smart Search French-speaking testers required
    • 28971 - Smart Search: wrong URL with multilingual site and SEF enabled
    • 28972 - Smart Search: suggestions are not filtered by current language
    • 29027 - Add language data to Smart Search indexing's tokenize process
    • 29824 - Finder saves * in language field
  • Multi-database fixes and improvements
    • 27695 - Smart Search Indexer does not work on SQL Server See 28924
    • 28445 - Smart Search throws an SQL error upon Indexing (duplicate of 27695)
    • 28799 - Only run Smart Search indexer on supported databases See 28918
    • 28918 - Abstract FinderIndexer class for improved database support
    • 28924 - Add SQL Server subclass for FinderIndexer
  • Large site fixes and improvements
    • 27627 - Indexer stalling on large sites
    • 27628 - Smart Search database size is too large
    • 28668 - Smart Search CLI: Memory leak in JComponentHelper::isEnabled()
    • 28669 - Smart Search CLI: Memory leak in FinderIndexer::index()
  • Other fixes and improvements
    • 27715 - Smart Search - Changes to Menu Items can cause errors with search results
    • 27717 - error saving _finder_tokens with big articles
    • 27884 - Inconsistent Itemid with Smart Search module when SEF enabled/disabled
    • 27933 - Smart Search module does not read static filter setting from module parameters
    • 28029 - FinderIndexerAdapter Optimization - Double Cost Testers required
    • 28035 - Smart Search shows text from public articles from categories with special access levels in search results
    • 28081 - Smart Search Results Page Displays Wrong Modules
    • 28197 - Bug in the Smart Search indexer that is causing items ids to be indexed
    • 28403 - Validation error on com_finder Testers required
    • 28405 - Smart Search - CLI Indexer doesn't catch exceptions
    • 28480 - Smart search fills up cache folder
    • 28590 - Smart Search doesn't get the menu item title effectively when indexing Testers required
    • 28610 - Several ACL & Toolbar fixes for com_finder (Smart Search) Testers required
    • 28672 - Fix PHP Strict errors with Smart Search auto-completion
    • 28687 - Escaping of quoted search terms alone
    • 28689 - FinderController duplicate lines
    • 28712 - Deleting an article doesn't delete the smart search entry
    • 28754 - ModFinderHelper::getGetFields
    • 28756 - Enable Search Term Logging in Smart Search
    • 28797 - Code Cleanup - Smart Search
    • 28858 - Com_finder missing show_advanced_tips parameter => can't hide advanced tips
    • 28930 - Deleting in Finder displays extra code
    • 28939 - Add Bootstrap Modal behavior, add toolbar button for a modal, use in Smart Search
    • 28942 - Use bootstrap markup in Fx.Progressbar; Use Fx.Progressbar in Finder
    • 28978 - Smart search (com_finder) - problem when using "Allow Empty Search"
    • 28998 - Filter display not showing a filter in article category view
    • 29028 - Finder log messages showing on save
    • 29058 - Check parent state/access in Smart Search category plugin
    • 29059 - Smart Search - Filter Edit does not check the checked_out status to set the toolbar buttons
    • 29077 - Add a toolbar button to render a Bootstrap modal, add a helper method to render the modal, use it for Smart Search indexer
    • 29100 - mod_finder does not find correct route
    • 29143 - Smart Search Ajax suggestions do not respect static filters from module-settings
    • 29353 - Smart Search Module Not Using Selected Filter
    • 29572 - Smart Search Error: Unknown column 'm.weight' in 'field list' when doing empty searches (Duplicate of 28978)
    • 29691 - Smart Search auto complete.is issue
    • 29953 - smart search - this.toggleFocus.create is not a function
    • 30245 - articles are not reindexed by finder plugin properly when their category access changes
    • 30266 - Array to string conversion in smart search
    • Investigate lack of ACL in auto-completion. Possible solution
• Medium-term (address during 3.x cycle for release in 4.0)
  • 27592 - Rename Finder plug-in group
  • Save static filter definitions and restore them after a purge/rebuild cycle
  • Mixed language content items
  • Define a query language and build a parser to support it (with proper tests)
  • Allow more than one "Did you mean?" suggestion
  • Search API
  • Swappable back-end search engine adapters
  • Range query support
  • Search logging via JLog and search statistics reporting
  • Decouple indexing using message queues (see Message Queue Working Group)
  • Make it easier to load non-English common word lists
  • Phonetic/morphological coding improvements - better multi-lingual Soundex support
  • Improve multi-language tokenisation
  • Multi-level taxonomy support
  • Add parsers for PDF and MS Word documents
    • Look at porting the Finder plug-ins to Smart Search
  • Dashboard view in Administrator
  • Administrator search (see User Experience Working Group)
• Long-term (address during 3.x and 4.x cycles for possible release in 5.0)

Meetings

• 19 May 2012: Meeting at J and Beyond 2012, Germany.
• 17 November 2012: Meeting at Joomla World Conference, San Jose, California. This meeting was cancelled due to lack of interest and a scheduling conflict with the UCM group!
• 31 May - 2 June 2013: Meeting during J and Beyond 2013, The Netherlands.
• November 2013: Meeting during Joomla World Conference, date and location to be determined.