Javascript search engine?

[Deryck]

Hi,

I am working on an e-commerce site. It uses a CMS. One requirement is to
have a static off-line version so that the company's sales reps can visit
customers and take orders on a laptop without having to go online (I'm told
that the rep's customers don't always appreciate being asked for a phone
line to be tied up and that sometimes they operate in areas of poor cellular
coverage). The reps upload their orders when they reach a phone line (back
at home or hotel).

Writing a static version of the site won't prove to be a problem. We can
create a javascript shopping basket facility for the reps to replace the
server-side one that the www "public" customers would deal with - we'd need
a different form for the reps customers anyway since they deal with account
customers rather than customers paying by credit card.

However there is a problem: reps still need to search the site to find
items. Is there a decent javascript search facilty solution? Googling hasn't
proved too helpful thus far.

I'm inclined to think that we need to bite the bullet and install apache and
perl/php (and probably the database too while we're at it) and go for a
server side solution although Im worried about reps getting into difficult
with that. Javascript for them would be a simpler way to go, assuming a
solution exists.

The reps would be issued with a "snapshot" of the website every month or so
on a CD and the search facility would be restricted to searching files on
that CD.

Thanks for any help and advice that you can provide.


Deryck

 

[Richard H]

AFAIK this is not possible, I had a similar problem and was not able to find
a solution using javascript. The only way I can think of doing it would be
to create an array on your search page, load all your pages into the array,
and then find a way to work though all the array. I have never done this and
don't even know if it could be done, it is just an idea!

I think the web server with php might be the way forward. If anyone does
have a solution i would be very interested to hear about it.

 

[Deryck]

AFAIK this is not possible, I had a similar problem and was not able to
find
a solution using javascript. The only way I can think of doing it would be
to create an array on your search page, load all your pages into the
array,
and then find a way to work though all the array. I have never done this
and
don't even know if it could be done, it is just an idea!

I think the web server with php might be the way forward. If anyone does
have a solution i would be very interested to hear about it.

Thanks Richard. I am coming to the same conclusion. I'm going to experiment
a bit with creating an "index array" where the name of an html file is
followed by 1 or more key words (in this case a html file will hold details
of 1 product item only so its quite a good mapping). I'm told that the CMS
can be configured (or coded more likely) to produce output in this format
when it dumps out static html pages and then this output can be shoe-horned
into a .js file as an array.....maybe.

The webserver does sound more elegant doesnt it?

Cheers

Deryck

 

[Fabian]

Perhaps you could install a mirror of the site (complete with php and
installing a web server on the laptops). and then have some back-end way
of synchronising your sales staff's order databases with teh main
database?

 

[Jim Ley]

I'm inclined to think that we need to bite the bullet and install apache and
perl/php (and probably the database too while we're at it) and go for a
server side solution

just microweb, a no-install server, and perl cgi's with perl2exe, no
dependencies, no install required.

Jim.

 

[Ian Sedwell]

AFAIK this is not possible, I had a similar problem and was not able to find
a solution using javascript. The only way I can think of doing it would be
to create an array on your search page, load all your pages into the array,
and then find a way to work though all the array. I have never done this and
don't even know if it could be done, it is just an idea!

I think the web server with php might be the way forward. If anyone does
have a solution i would be very interested to hear about it.

I've tried two different ways in the past. Both only work with relatively
small sites.

1. I used a 4D application to build an index of all the words and their page
locations in the site (I'm a computational linguist, so it's the kind of
thing I have lying around!) and then write it into a suitable array
structure that I could then cut'n'paste into my JavaScript. It was then a
simple matter to write a search routine.

2. I used ShockWave to load a text array constructed pretty much as for the
first effort. I then used JavaScript to call into ShockWave, which did the
lookup and then send the results back to JavaScript. This was quite neat
because I could enhance the search with a proximity feature as I could leave
the tables on the server and let ShockWave work out which ones it had to
get.

Mind you this is just me playing around out of idle curiosity. Now I have a
life and go out at night.

I'm looking at a project for the start of next year though and I will almost
certainly use 4D for the whole shooting match.

Doing my research for this project I came across a number of good Java-based
goodies, but they were too limited for my uses. OK for single word lookup
though. Sorry I haven't kept the URLs, but a fishing trip to the Google
should yield results. Getting JavaScript to talk to Java is a doddle. But
don't forget that Java and JavaScript are not at all closely related other
than similarities in their basic syntax (like C, C++, ActionScript, BCPL,
etc.)

All the best

Ian