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Quick-start

This guide will help you get set up quickly using Examine with minimal configuration options. Umbraco ships Examine with 3 indexes: internal, external, and members. The internal index should not be used for searching when returning results on a public website because it includes content that has not been published yet. Instead, you can use the external index to get up and running.

Performing a search

In the coming examples, the Umbraco Starter Kit has been used, as it provides some example content that can be searched. Therefore, some of the examples below may require 'the setting up of templates, etc' if you follow the guide on your existing site.

The starter kit comes with some Templates, Document Types, and content nodes created already. We will use some of these to set up a basic search system. This is a 'Quick Start' guide, as many more complex searches are possible with Examine.

We will make it possible to 'search' on the People page, by adding a search bar to the template page: people.cshtml - add the following form at the top of the template, but underneath the <nav> element:

...
</nav>
-->
<div>
    <form action="@Model.Url()" method="get">
        <input type="text" placeholder="Search" name="query"/>
        <button>Search</button>
    </form>
</div>
<div class="employee-grid">
...

This will create a basic input field at the top of the page and make it post to the same people page when submitted along with the search term.

Handling the search request

The best practice for POST requests is to encapsulate the request handling in a controller. To do this we will leverage the concept of route hijacking.

Let's start by creating a PeopleController that derives from RenderController and add an Index method.

It is important to name our controller by the convention NameOfViewController. In our case the view is named People, so the controller is named PeopleController.

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.ViewEngines;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Web;
using Umbraco.Cms.Web.Common.Controllers;

namespace MyStarterKitSite.Controllers;

public class PeopleController : RenderController
{
    public PeopleController(
    ILogger<RenderController> logger,
    ICompositeViewEngine compositeViewEngine,
    IUmbracoContextAccessor umbracoContextAccessor)
    : base(
        logger,
        compositeViewEngine,
        umbracoContextAccessor)
    {
    }

    public override IActionResult Index()
    {
        return CurrentTemplate(CurrentPage);
    }
}

Adding a Service that handles our search logic

To search anything from our controller, we first need to create a service that handles the actual search logic. We'll start by creating an interface for our service.

using System.Collections.Generic;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Models.PublishedContent;

namespace MyStarterKitSite.Services;

public interface ISearchService
{
    IEnumerable<IPublishedContent> SearchContentNames(string query);
}

Now create a default implementation of the service interface.

using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Models.PublishedContent;
using Umbraco.Cms.Web.UI.Services;

namespace MyStarterKitSite.Services;

public class SearchService : ISearchService
{
    public IEnumerable<IPublishedContent> SearchContentNames(string query) => throw new NotImplementedException();
}

And finally register the service in Startup.

// ... (removed for abbreviation)
builder.Services.AddTransient<ISearchService, SearchService>();

Examine Search Index

To perform the search we will first need to get a reference to the particular Examine index that we want to search. Then we will use this index to access its corresponding Searcher. We use the Searcher to construct the query logic to execute and search the index.

Umbraco ships with three indexes:

ExternalIndex - available to use for indexing published unprotected content.
InternalIndex - which Umbraco's backoffice search uses.
MembersIndex - which Umbraco's Membership implementation uses.

You can create your own indexes too if you need to analyse text in a different language for example.

The service IExamineManager is used to retrieve an Examine index by its 'alias', so we need to inject that service into our SearchService.

using System.Collections.Generic;
using Examine;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Models.PublishedContent;

namespace MyStarterKitSite.Services;

public class SearchService : ISearchService
{
    private readonly IExamineManager _examineManager;
    public SearchService(IExamineManager examineManager)
    {
        _examineManager = examineManager;
    }
    public IEnumerable<IPublishedContent> SearchContentNames(string query) => throw new NotImplementedException();
}

Creating the Search Query

With the IExamineManager injected in our SearchService, we can implement the SearchContentNames method. We do this using the Searcher for the Examine index 'ExternalIndex'.

IEnumerable<string> ids = Array.Empty<string>();
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(query) && _examineManager.TryGetIndex("ExternalIndex", out IIndex? index))
{
    ids = index
        .Searcher
        .CreateQuery("content")
        .NodeTypeAlias("person")
        .And()
        .Field("nodeName", query)
        .Execute()
        .Select(x => x.Id);
}

We reference the External index by its alias "ExternalIndex". Umbraco has a set of 'Constants' that refer to the indexes that can be more convenient to use Constants.UmbracoIndexes. So, in the example here we could have used Constants.UmbracoIndexes.ExternalIndexName instead of "ExternalIndex".

The Searcher has a CreateQuery method, where you can choose to search content, media or members eg:

Searcher.CreateQuery("content")

From here you can see how we can chain together the logic to perform the search. In the example, we are searching all content using the person Document Type, where the nodeName is equal to the search term that was typed in the input bar.

Searcher.CreateQuery("content").NodeTypeAlias("person").And().Field("nodeName", searchTerm)

Calling .Execute() at the end of the query logic triggers the search and returns a set of matching search results, which we can loop through to get the IDs of the resulting content items.

Getting the content

We want to retrieve the actual content from the IDs. For that, we need the UmbracoHelper, which must be injected into our service as well. The final implementation of SearchService then looks like this.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using Examine;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Models.PublishedContent;
using Umbraco.Cms.Web.Common;
using Umbraco.Extensions;

namespace MyStarterKitSite.Services;

public class SearchService : ISearchService
{
    private readonly IExamineManager _examineManager;
    private readonly UmbracoHelper _umbracoHelper;

    public SearchService(IExamineManager examineManager, UmbracoHelper umbracoHelper)
    {
        _examineManager = examineManager;
        _umbracoHelper = umbracoHelper;
    }

    public IEnumerable<IPublishedContent> SearchContentNames(string query)
    {
        IEnumerable<string> ids = Array.Empty<string>();
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(query) && _examineManager.TryGetIndex("ExternalIndex", out IIndex? index))
        {
            ids = index
                .Searcher
                .CreateQuery("content")
                .NodeTypeAlias("person")
                .And()
                .Field("nodeName", query)
                .Execute()
                .Select(x => x.Id);
        }

        foreach (var id in ids)
        {
            yield return _umbracoHelper.Content(id);
        }
    }
}

After getting the ids from our search, we then loop through the list and return the content.

Creating a custom view model

We will now need a custom view model so that we can pass our search results to the view. Our view model needs to inherit from PublishedContentWrapped because our People view is expecting a model that is content. We then wrap the content and add the search data, all in a convenient view model.

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Models.PublishedContent;

namespace MyStarterKitSite.Models;

public class SearchViewModel : PublishedContentWrapped
{
    public SearchViewModel(IPublishedContent content, IPublishedValueFallback publishedValueFallback)
        : base(content, publishedValueFallback)
    {
    }

    public IEnumerable<IPublishedContent> SearchResults { get; set; } = Enumerable.Empty<IPublishedContent>();
    public bool HasSearched { get; set; }
}

Using the service and view model in the controller

Now that we've created our service to handle the actual search logic, and our view model to pass the search results to the view, let's look at using them in the controller. We will want to update the Index() method to get out the query string from the request, then create a view model and populate the SearchResults property by using our service.

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.ViewEngines;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;
using MyStarterKitSite.Models;
using MyStarterKitSite.Services;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Models.PublishedContent;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Web;
using Umbraco.Cms.Web.Common.Controllers;

namespace MyStarterKitSite.Controllers;

public class PeopleController : RenderController
{
    private readonly IPublishedValueFallback _publishedValueFallback;
    private readonly ISearchService _searchService;

    public PeopleController(
        ILogger<RenderController> logger,
        ICompositeViewEngine compositeViewEngine,
        IUmbracoContextAccessor umbracoContextAccessor,
        IPublishedValueFallback publishedValueFallback,
        ISearchService searchService)
        : base(logger,
            compositeViewEngine,
            umbracoContextAccessor)
    {
        _publishedValueFallback = publishedValueFallback;
        _searchService = searchService;
    }

    public override IActionResult Index()
    {
        // Get the queryString from the request
        string queryString = HttpContext.Request.Query["query"];

        // Create the view model and pass it to the view
        SearchViewModel viewModel = new(CurrentPage!, _publishedValueFallback)
        {
            SearchResults = _searchService.SearchContentNames(queryString),
            HasSearched = !string.IsNullOrEmpty(queryString),
        };

        return CurrentTemplate(viewModel);
    }
}

Updating the view to use the viewmodel

The final thing we need to do is update the view to use our new view model. We do that by changing the @inherits line in the view.

@inherits Umbraco.Cms.Web.Common.Views.UmbracoViewPage<MyStarterKitSite.Models.SearchViewModel>

Let's now use the view model to display the search results. We'll place them directly under the form we created earlier.

<div>
    @if (Model.SearchResults.Any())
    {
        <ul>
            @foreach (var content in Model.SearchResults)
            {
                <li>
                    <a href="@content.Url()">@content.Name</a>
                </li>
            }
        </ul>
    }
    else if(Model.HasSearched)
    {
        <p>No results found</p>
    }
</div>

Different ways to query

Examine has a lot of different ways to query data. Building upon the example from before, here are a few other searches that can be done to get different data:

Search through all nodes

Let's say you want to search through all content nodes by their file names. You could amend the query from before like this:

Searcher.CreateQuery("content").Field("nodeName", searchTerm).Execute();

Search using Lucene queries

To do the search like above, but only use Lucene to query, amend the query from before like this:

Searcher.CreateQuery().NativeQuery("+__IndexType:content +nodeName:" + searchTerm).Execute();

Search children of a specific node

To search through all child nodes of a specific node by their bodyText property, amend the query from before like this:

Searcher.CreateQuery("content").ParentId(1105).And().Field("bodyText", searchTerm).Execute();