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Documentation Search

Overview

Archived CIM documents are indexed into a PostgreSQL database and can be retrieved via a web-service. The documentation search application pulls documentation summary data from the web-service and renders it to the user. The user can then browse search results and open documents of interest in a viewer.

Frameworks

The online documentation search application is a pure javascript web application built using the following frameworks:

Asset Directories

The application assets are laid out with the following directory structure:

  • ext

    • 3rd party libraries such as backbone & bootstrap

  • media/css

    • CSS files for determining look & feel

  • media/img

    • Image files such as logo & favicon

  • media/js

    • Set of javascript files collectively forming the application proper

Page Loading

When a user navigates to the main page the application assets are loaded into memory by the host browser. Once loaded, the application issues an asynchronous request to the the documentation API to pull setup data used in the application rendering process. Once the setup data is downloaded, another call to the documentation API is made in order to pull the initial set of search results for rendering.

Filtering & Pagination

  • For each project under which documents have been published a set of custom search filters are available. The filters are simple drop-down boxes that present a list of constrained terms.

  • The search user interface paginates search results. A user may naviagate to either a specific page or the first | previous | next | last page.

Event Loop

The internal design of the application revolves an event loop:

  • a set of decoupled components communicate with each other via events

  • each event has a unique type identifier, e.g. search:dataDownload

  • a component executes code in response to an event by hooking into the application's internal event stream:

APP.on("search:dataDownload", function (eventData) {
    ... code ...
})

View Templates

The application is built around a single view file that loads view templates from the application's index.html file. Each view template is declared as a script of type underscore/template. Once loaded into memory the template is parsed & interpolated. The end result is HTML ready for rendering.

GitHub Repository

  • https://github.com/ES-DOC/esdoc-web-search