I thought it might be fun to play around with the people search of MOSS. I wanted to have an auto complete like experience, where you could start typing someone’s name and a list of suggestions are displayed below:
I started by including JQuery and the Autocomplete JQuery plugin into a style library.
Next I created a Handler called PeopleSearch.ashx, I placed this in the _layouts directory (or 12 hive \TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS )
The code for this handler is simple:
1: <%@ WebHandler Language="C#" Class="GenericHandler1" %>
2: <%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
3: <%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
4: <%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.Office.Server, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
5:
6: using System;
7: using System.Web;
8: using System.Data;
9: using Microsoft.SharePoint;
10: using Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query;
11:
12: public class GenericHandler1 : IHttpHandler {
13:
14: public void ProcessRequest (HttpContext context) {
15: context.Response.ContentType = "text/plain";
16:
17: string prefixText = context.Request["q"];
18: using (SPSite siteCollection = SPContext.Current.Site)
19: {
20: // create a new FullTextSqlQuery class
21: FullTextSqlQuery query = new FullTextSqlQuery(siteCollection);
22: query.QueryText = string.Format("SELECT Title FROM SCOPE() WHERE FREETEXT(defaultproperties, '{0}*') AND \"Scope\"='People' ", prefixText);
23: query.ResultTypes = ResultType.RelevantResults;
24: query.RowLimit = 10;
25:
26: // execute the query
27: ResultTableCollection queryResults = query.Execute();
28: ResultTable queryResultsTable = queryResults[ResultType.RelevantResults];
29:
30:
31: while(queryResultsTable.Read()){
32: context.Response.Write(queryResultsTable.GetString(0) + Environment.NewLine);
33: }
34: }
35:
36: }
37:
38: public bool IsReusable {
39: get {
40: return false;
41: }
42: }
43:
44: }
It simply executes a full text query on the People Search Scope with the current text as the argument. Download the handler here.
Next I added a content Editor web part to the PeopleSearch.aspx page and included the following JavaScript (in the HTML source view):
1: <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://server/Style%20Library/jquery-1.2.6.min.js"/> 1: 2: <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://server/Style%20Library/jquery.autocomplete.min.js"/> 3: 4: <script type="text/javascript"> 5: 6: $(document).ready(function() { 7: 8: $("input[id*='_InputKeywords']").autocomplete("/_layouts/PeopleSearch.ashx"); 9: $("input[id*='_InputKeywords']").attr("autocomplete","off"); 10: 11: }); 12: </script>
1:
2: <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://server/Style%20Library/jquery.autocomplete.min.js"/>
3:
4: <script type="text/javascript">
6: $(document).ready(function() {
7:
8: $("input[id*='_InputKeywords']").autocomplete("/_layouts/PeopleSearch.ashx");
9: $("input[id*='_InputKeywords']").attr("autocomplete","off");
10:
11: });
12:
The first thing I do is add a new attribute to prevent IE (or Firefox) from showing the previous search items. The next thing is to add the call the autocomplete plugin on the search textbox (which is found with because we know the id always ends with _InputKeywords).
I also added some styles from the autocomplete css to the css of the site.
It’s really that simple to get look ahead searching on people in MOSS. In fact this same approach could work on all the search pages.