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Integrating Google search into your site using ColdFusion and XML |
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This article examines how you can create and integrate a Google site search into your site. We will query Google and return an XML packet, which we will translate and display within our sites framework.
I am using XML as I must parse the result myself for Accessability. There are a few different ways of returning result, including some really nice AJAX stuff. None of them are Accessable for disabled users though.
To start with go here: http://www.google.co.uk/sitesearch
You can setup a free or Business account. This allows you to specify which sites the search will index, and any exclusions or filtering rules you want. The main difference between the free and Business accounts is the control you have over advertising.
The first step to create a simply search form, the simple form below will submit a form value to a processing template that we will build below.
2<label for="q">Search:</label> <input type="text" name="q" id="q">
3</form>
Next we need to create the template that will handle the form value, and process the results (page.cfm from the form above). The first step is to create a url string that we will use in a cfhttp request. This fires your form value to Google. We also specify that we want the return in an XML format. The http request is parsed using xmlParse.
2<h1>Search results</h1>
3
4<cfif not len(attributes.q)>
5Please enter some search text
6<cfelse>
7
8<cfset variables.url = "http://www.google.com/cse?cx=YOUR_ACCOUNT_NUMBER&client=google-csbe&output=xml_no_dtd&q=">
9<cfset variables.url = variables.url & attributes.q>
10
11<cfhttp url="#arguments.url#" method="get" result="variables.response"></cfhttp>
12
13<cfscript>
14 xmlfile = xmlparse(variables.response.filecontent);
15</cfscript>
16
17<cftry>
18<cfset arrEntries = variables.response.gsp.res.r>
19<cfcatch>
20<!--- no response --->
21<cfset variables.noResults = true>
22</cfcatch>
23</cftry>
In the next block of code we check that we successfully parsed the XML and that we have a valid Array. Then we loop over the results Array setting the values we want. Then display them on the page.
2<p>There were no results for your search using <strong>#attributes.q#</strong></p>
3<cfelse>
4<p>Below are the results for your search on '<strong>#attributes.q#</strong>'</p>
5<p></p>
6
7<cfloop index="i" from="1" to="#ArrayLen(arrEntries)#">
8<cfset properties["searchTitle"] = arrEntries[i].XmlChildren[3].XmlText>
9<cfset properties["searchString"] = arrEntries[i].XmlChildren[5].XmlText>
10<cfset properties["searchUrl"] = arrEntries[i].XmlChildren[1].XmlText>
11
12<h3 class="search-header"><a href="#properties.searchUrl#" title="#properties.searchTitle#" target="_blank">#properties.searchTitle#</a></h3>
13
14<div>#properties.searchString#</div>
15<br>
16</cfloop>
17</cfif>
18</cfif>
The returned XML packet has a lot more data in it than just the three values I am using, so you could expand on this.
This is very cool. I did not realize you could search Google via a free API. On my site, I have to use some old Script/iFrame thing (possibly the very old version of this). I have never liked it and formatting it was always hacky. This way looks so much nicer.
Thanks for the comments Ben, I never knew it could be done this way either until I had to built a visually impaired solution for a Blind Charity group. Some of the AJAX Google solutions are really nice now tho, they have inline pagination and things too.
Curious. Does anyone know why the XML file only returns a maximum of 10 results? Am I missing some sort of pagination functionality built into the xml file?
It is a little bizarre, I think there is probably a value you can send in, I'd be amazed if it wasn't a start - limit pair like mySql. Using that you could probably build paging, I didn't see any built in pagination in the XML though.
I actually found a bit of a solution. In the docs it says you can pass in the param "num" and specify the max records you want. The only problem is that it will only return back a total of 20 records per request. Next request you have to use the start param to start where you left off from the previous request.
