Integrate search

3 min

📘 Note The Full-text Search Service applies to Optimizely Content Management System (CMS 11) and is not supported on Optimizely Digital Experience Platform (DXP) and other cloud service deployments. It is a legacy feature that will be removed in future versions.

This section is not supported for ASP.NET Core-based applications.

CMS stores information about CMS content (pages and blocks) in a searchable index. To find items in the index, compose search queries from different subqueries. The following samples show how you can search in that index.

How to search for pages

public IEnumerable<PageData> FindPages(string searchQuery, ContentReference searchRoot, string cultureId, int pagingNumber, int pagingSize) {
  // The group query is needed to combine the different criteria
  GroupQuery groupQuery = new GroupQuery(LuceneOperator.AND);

  // The content query makes sure we only get hits that are of the type PageData
  groupQuery.QueryExpressions.Add(new ContentQuery<PageData>());

  // The field query contains the search phrase
  groupQuery.QueryExpressions.Add(new FieldQuery(searchQuery));

  // The virtual path query makes sure that we only get hits for children of the specified search root
  VirtualPathQuery pathQuery = new VirtualPathQuery();
  pathQuery.AddContentNodes(searchRoot);
  groupQuery.QueryExpressions.Add(pathQuery);

  // The access control list query will remove any pages the user doesn't have read access to
  AccessControlListQuery aclQuery = new AccessControlListQuery();
  aclQuery.AddAclForUser(PrincipalInfo.Current, HttpContext.Current);
  groupQuery.QueryExpressions.Add(aclQuery);

  // Add a specific field query for the Culture field in order to search for a specific culture
  groupQuery.QueryExpressions.Add(new FieldQuery(cultureId, Field.Culture));

  var searchHandler = ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<SearchHandler>();
  SearchResults results = searchHandler.GetSearchResults(groupQuery, pagingNumber, pagingSize);

  var contentSearchHandler = ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<ContentSearchHandler>();
  foreach(var hit in results.IndexResponseItems) {
    // Use the content search handler to convert the page hit into a PageData
    yield
    return contentSearchHandler.GetContent<PageData>(hit);
  }
}

How to search for files

public IEnumerable<string> FindFiles(string searchQuery, VersioningDirectory searchRoot, int pagingNumber, int pagingSize) {
  // The group query is needed to combine the different criteria
  GroupQuery groupQuery = new GroupQuery(LuceneOperator.AND);

  // The unified file query makes sure we only get hits that are files
  groupQuery.QueryExpressions.Add(new UnifiedFileQuery());

  // The field query contains the search phrase
  groupQuery.QueryExpressions.Add(new FieldQuery(searchQuery));

  // The virtual path query makes sure that we only get hits for children of the specified search root
  VirtualPathQuery pathQuery = new VirtualPathQuery();
  pathQuery.AddDirectoryNodes(searchRoot);
  groupQuery.QueryExpressions.Add(pathQuery);

  // The access control list query will remove any files the user doesn't have read access to
  AccessControlListQuery aclQuery = new AccessControlListQuery();
  aclQuery.AddAclForUser(PrincipalInfo.Current, HttpContext.Current);
  groupQuery.QueryExpressions.Add(aclQuery);

  var searchHandler = ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<SearchHandler>();
  SearchResults results = searchHandler.GetSearchResults(groupQuery, pagingNumber, pagingSize);

  foreach(var hit in results.IndexResponseItems) {
    // Return the virtual path for each matching file.
    yield
    return hit.Uri.ToString();
  }
}

CMS types are stored in the index

CMS stores types in the index by mapping values from the objects onto an IndexRequestItem, and send it to the indexing service. PageData and VersioningFile are two of the most common indexed CMS types that it stores in the index.

When you store a PageData in the index, its properties are mapped to the fields on the index request item in the following way.

IndexRequestItem item	PageData page
item.Id	page.PageGuid	page.LanguageBranch
item.Uri	page.LinkUrl
item.Title	page.Name
item.Created	page.Created
item.Modified	page.Changed
item.Culture	page.LanguageBranch
item.ItemType	A comma-separated list of the type of the page and any inherited types
item.Authors	page.CreatedBy
item.DisplayText	Content from searchable properties on the page
item.AccessControlList	page.ACL, but only about read access
item.Categories	page.Category
item.VirtualPathNodes	The ancestors to the page, ordered with the oldest first
item.ItemStatus	Always approved
item.PublicationEnd	page.StopPublish

When you store a VersioningFile in the index, its properties are mapped to the fields the following way.

IndexRequestItem item	VersioningFile file
item.Id	file.Guid
item.Title	file.Name
item.DataUri	file.LocalPath
item.Uri	file.PermanentLinkVirtualPath or file.VirtualPath
item.Authors	file.Summary.Author
item.Categories	file.Summary.Category split by character ','
item.ItemStatus	Always approved
item.Metadata	file.Name without extension and values from file.Summary.Dictionary
item.AccessControlList	Users and roles with read access from file.Parent.ACL
item.VirtualPathNodes	The guid of each parent directory ending with file.Guid
item.DisplayText	The content of the file, if you installed required IFilter