Frontend views¶
Default Page Search¶
Wagtail provides a default frontend search interface which indexes the title
field common to all Page
-derived models. Let’s take a look at all the components of the search interface.
The most basic search functionality just needs a search box which submits a request. Since this will be reused throughout the site, let’s put it in mysite/includes/search_box.html
and then use {% include ... %}
to weave it into templates:
<form action="{% url 'wagtailsearch_search' %}" method="get">
<input type="text" name="q"{% if query_string %} value="{{ query_string }}"{% endif %}>
<input type="submit" value="Search">
</form>
The form is submitted to the url of the wagtailsearch_search
view, with the search terms variable q
. The view will use its own basic search results template.
Let’s use our own template for the results, though. First, in your project’s settings.py
, define a path to your template:
WAGTAILSEARCH_RESULTS_TEMPLATE = 'mysite/search_results.html'
Next, let’s look at the template itself:
{% extends "mysite/base.html" %}
{% load pageurl %}
{% block title %}Search{% if search_results %} Results{% endif %}{% endblock %}
{% block search_box %}
{% include "mysite/includes/search_box.html" with query_string=query_string only %}
{% endblock %}
{% block content %}
<h2>Search Results{% if request.GET.q %} for {{ request.GET.q }}{% endif %}</h2>
<ul>
{% for result in search_results %}
<li>
<h4><a href="{% pageurl result.specific %}">{{ result.specific }}</a></h4>
{% if result.specific.search_description %}
{{ result.specific.search_description|safe }}
{% endif %}
</li>
{% empty %}
<li>No results found</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
{% endblock %}
The search view provides a context with a few useful variables.
query_string
- The terms (string) used to make the search.
search_results
- A collection of Page objects matching the query. The
specific
property ofPage
will give the most-specific subclassed model object for the Wagtail page. For instance, if anEvent
model derived from the basic WagtailPage
were included in the search results, you could usespecific
to access the custom properties of theEvent
model (result.specific.date_of_event
).is_ajax
- Boolean. This returns Django’s
request.is_ajax()
.query
- A Wagtail
Query
object matching the terms. TheQuery
model provides several class methods for viewing the statistics of all queries, but exposes only one property for single objects,query.hits
, which tracks the number of time the search string has been used over the lifetime of the site.Query
also joins to the Editor’s Picks functionality thoughquery.editors_picks
. See Editor’s picks.
Asynchronous Search with JSON and AJAX¶
Wagtail provides JSON search results when queries are made to the wagtailsearch_suggest
view. To take advantage of it, we need a way to make that URL available to a static script. Instead of hard-coding it, let’s set a global variable in our base.html
:
<script>
var wagtailJSONSearchURL = "{% url 'wagtailsearch_suggest' %}";
</script>
Now add a simple interface for the search with a <input>
element to gather search terms and a <div>
to display the results:
<div>
<h3>Search</h3>
<input id="json-search" type="text">
<div id="json-results"></div>
</div>
Finally, we’ll use JQuery to make the asynchronous requests and handle the interactivity:
$(function() {
// cache the elements
var searchBox = $('#json-search'),
resultsBox = $('#json-results');
// when there's something in the input box, make the query
searchBox.on('input', function() {
if( searchBox.val() == ''){
resultsBox.html('');
return;
}
// make the request to the Wagtail JSON search view
$.ajax({
url: wagtailJSONSearchURL + "?q=" + searchBox.val(),
dataType: "json"
})
.done(function(data) {
console.log(data);
if( data == undefined ){
resultsBox.html('');
return;
}
// we're in business! let's format the results
var htmlOutput = '';
data.forEach(function(element, index, array){
htmlOutput += '<p><a href="' + element.url + '">' + element.title + '</a></p>';
});
// and display them
resultsBox.html(htmlOutput);
})
.error(function(data){
console.log(data);
});
});
});
Results are returned as a JSON object with this structure:
{
[
{
title: "Lumpy Space Princess",
url: "/oh-my-glob/"
},
{
title: "Lumpy Space",
url: "/no-smooth-posers/"
},
...
]
}
What if you wanted access to the rest of the results context or didn’t feel like using JSON? Wagtail also provides a generalized AJAX interface where you can use your own template to serve results asynchronously.
The AJAX interface uses the same view as the normal HTML search, wagtailsearch_search
, but will serve different results if Django classifies the request as AJAX (request.is_ajax()
). Another entry in your project settings will let you override the template used to serve this response:
WAGTAILSEARCH_RESULTS_TEMPLATE_AJAX = 'myapp/includes/search_listing.html'
In this template, you’ll have access to the same context variables provided to the HTML template. You could provide a template in JSON format with extra properties, such as query.hits
and editor’s picks, or render an HTML snippet that can go directly into your results <div>
. If you need more flexibility, such as multiple formats/templates based on differing requests, you can set up a custom search view.
Custom Search Views¶
This functionality is still under active development to provide a streamlined interface, but take a look at wagtail/wagtail/wagtailsearch/views/frontend.py
if you are interested in coding custom search views.