[wp-hackers] Page searching examples [was: 2.4 planning discussion]

[Travis Snoozy]

On Wed, 3 Oct 2007 13:34:08 -0400, "Doug Stewart" <zamoose at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Instead of simply creating a unitary search function, why not create
> separate template functions like
> 
> post_search_results()
> page_search_results()
> tag_search_results()
> category_search_results()
> attachment_search_results()
> 
> ...etc.?
> 
> Or is there a desire to have all the search results returned in a
> single results object for some reason?

Because a user knows -what- he's looking for, and it's search's job to
tell him -where-, not the other way around? ;)

Also, this would prime templates to get hosed if/when any unified
relevance-based search came into play.

> I'd be down with the more granular approach -- theme devs could then
> have index.php?s=blahblahblah return results similar to what Apple's
> Spotlight does, breaking the results down by relative content type
> (or, in our case, it'd be relative context type).

Content type (video, messages, pictures, etc.) is somewhat important;
you generally know if you're looking for a picture or a report. The
splitting of each WordPress content type is more akin to searching Word
documents vs. RTF vs. plain text vs. PDF vs. HTML. It might be useful
in a subset of cases for the user to be specific about which type he
wants to search (like, when you -know- the file you're looking for is a
PDF), but the general case of "find me some documents that might be
relevant" should search -all- of those sources without you having to
individually specify each one.


-- 
Travis 

In Series maintainer
Random coder & quality guy
<http://remstate.com/>