Power Search Auto Complete

[amecca]

Now that I know this can be done, I have to have it!

Bill,

How complicated is it to set up the autocomplete. I noticed you responded to the question at the bottom of the power search documentation, but I am still a little confused as to how to get that running. If I were to set it up exactly as you did on your test page, what is the third party java code, and code pieces I need to get it going?



Once I get to a certain point in the coding process I can usually figure it out, but I don't have enough of the pieces yet. Can you help?

[wcw]

Re: Power Search Auto Complete

Google bsn autocomplete. You can get their code and familiarize how it works there. You can see the js I put on my page by viewing source. See the FAQ for the other pieces of the puzzle.

[amecca]

Re: Power Search Auto Complete

Bill,

I am sooo close. If I point the script to the test.php file it works. However, if I point the "Script:" line at the page it throws an error.

Here is the script on a page I created called "autos":
****************
<mvt:item name="powrsrch" param="headeroutput|Content-Type|application/json" />
<mvt:item name="powrsrch" param="picklist|8" />
{ results: [
<mvt:foreach iterator="pick" array="picklist">
<mvt:if expr="pos1 EQ 1">
{id: "&mvte:pick:id;", value: "&mvte:pick:term;"}
<mvt:else>
,{id: "&mvte:pick:id;", value: "&mvte:pick:term;"}
</mvt:if>
</mvt:foreach>
] }
*****************

Here is the javascript at the bottom of my footer:
again if I point the script to the test.php file it works. So my thought is it is in the file above...but not sure.
**************
<script type="text/javascript">
var options = {
script:"http://www.personalizeddoormats.com/merchant2/merchant.mvc?Store_Code=PD&Screen=autos&",
varname:"autoletter",
json:true,
minchars:1,
delay:100,
timeout:4000,
cache:false,
shownoresults:false,
callback: function (obj) { document.getElementById('testid').value = obj.id; }
};
var as_json = new AutoSuggest('mainsearch', options);
</script>
**************

[wcw]

Re: Power Search Auto Complete

Is the powrsrch item assigned to the items list of the autos page template?

What is the error message you are getting?

In your search form to you have id="mainsearch"

[amecca]

Re: Power Search Auto Complete

1) Yes the powrsrch item is assigned.
2) In firefox...it just doesn't work
In IE..I have a syntax error in the bottom right corner (and it doesn't work)
In Safari it gets a really big syntax error dialog box
3) not sure what the issue is with id="mainsearch". I assigned an id to the search box, is that wrong?

[wcw]

Re: Power Search Auto Complete

What is the error message you are getting?

[amecca]

Re: Power Search Auto Complete

IE is the only browser that shows the error:

Webpage error details
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Media Center PC 4.0; InfoPath.1; MS-RTC EA 2)
Timestamp: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 15:49:13 UTC

Message: Object doesn't support this action
Line: 280
Char: 2
Code: 0
URI: http://www.personalizeddoormats.com/...ggest_c_2.0.js

[wcw]

Re: Power Search Auto Complete

Let's see what the autos page is creating. On the autos page take out the line
<mvt:item name="powrsrch" param="headeroutput|Content-Type|application/json" />

Then run the page

http://www.personalizeddoormats.com/...s&autoletter=a

and see if it produces the list of terms beginning with "a".

[amecca]

Re: Power Search Auto Complete

It produced the following:

*********
{ results: [ {id: "1", value: "a better"} ,{id: "2", value: "a better tint"} ,{id: "3", value: "am"} ,{id: "4", value: "american"} ,{id: "5", value: "amity"} ,{id: "6", value: "amity hall"} ,{id: "7", value: "army"} ] }
*********

[wcw]

Re: Power Search Auto Complete

That is what the autosuggest script is expecting. I don't know why you are getting an error. Maybe you have another js on your site that has a conflict with that particular script.

[amecca]

Re: Power Search Auto Complete

Bill, It was conflicting with lightbox. I just reversed the order of the scripts and it is working. (so is lightbox). How does the script determine what to show. Is it based on the power srch settings?

[wcw]

Re: Power Search Auto Complete

It is based on the successful search terms (i.e. found products) used by customers over time. When you clean that file periodically, always leave at least a month worth of searches in the file.

[amecca]

Re: Power Search Auto Complete

Is there a way to include all products? This may be confusing to customers who search and it says "no results!" when there actually is results.

[wcw]

Re: Power Search Auto Complete

The autocomplete only lists successful terms. You would not want to put words in the list that would not get them results. That would just be a waste of time. As for the drop down list showing the words "no results", I suppose you could change that in the js file to say what you want it to say.

Now that you have that working, have you done the "did you mean" feature where it uses a soundex search to find similar terms to what they typed? That is where you capitalize on the "no results" found. They search for "amirica" and get no results. But the "did you mean" list comes up and the word America is in the list.

[amecca]

Re: Power Search Auto Complete

I was actually taking a look at that. That is probably my next project now that I have this one working like I want. :-)

Just an fyi here is a link to bsn.autosuggest version 2.1.3

This enables you to put the property "shownoresults:false," in the object. If you go to my site and type in "WO26", you'll see the dropdown just disappears when there are no results. Much better! :-)

Thanks for all your help on this.