[MTOS-dev] Implementing new MT::App::Search

[Fumiaki Yoshimatsu]

For those of you who read the document Tim has written a while ago on
the wiki [1], and for those of you who are wondering how the new
MT::App::Search relates to Tim's popular XSearch framework, let me
explain the (planned) goal of the implementation for MT 4.2.

[1] http://wiki.movabletype.org/Proposal:XSearch

First of all, the new MT::App::Search is based on the idea of XSearch
Tim proposed.  I just did not prepend the name with "X".
MT::App::Search should be as extensible and as pluggable as Tim's
XSearch framework is.

Second of all, the new MT::App::Search should be 100% backwards
compatible with the current MT::App::Search.  The implementation I
checked in leaves the entire code in MT::App::Search::Legacy class and
you can always use it by just changing what application is bootstrapped
in mt-search.cgi.  The new one should also leverage as many config
directives as possible and should be able to use all of the search
related template tegs.

Last but not the least, the new frameworks must be simple.  Because this
is the first iteration, we are not yet 100% sure how search plugins
would want to use the framework, I want the framework has as little
"required to be implemented" items as possible.  In fact I am to change
how search classes should implement search_terms method which returns
"terms" and "args" to pass to load_iter method later, because it seems
too restrictive.  I also want the framework leverage all the existing
infrastructure such as MT::Template::Context class for modeling search
results and existing template tags for user interface.

These are of course a source of discussion, not a concrete plan with
deadline (well, I think I have deadline though).  So, as always, please
share what you think.

Speaking of which, I also would like to know if it is OK to leave any of
these features currently found in mt-search behind.  Is there that many
use of the features?
* Regexp search
* Case sensitive search
* NOT, AND and OR atoms

In other words, should whitespace separated search keywords be enough
for blog readers?

Thanks!

Fumiaki Yoshimatsu
Movable Type Engineering,
Six Apart, K.K.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mtos-dev-bounces at sixapart.com
> [mailto:mtos-dev-bounces at sixapart.com] On Behalf Of Fumiaki Yoshimatsu
> Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2008 9:24 PM
> To: MTOS dev
> Subject: [MTOS-dev] Implementing new MT::App::Search