Search feature to CakePHP blog

First of all I assume that you have read and tried the blog example form documentation http://book.cakephp.org/view/219/blog).

Setup

So to get things started, we need to download seachable behavior from (http://code.google.com/p/searchable-behaviour-for-cakephp). Then we copy the archive contents to the /app folder. To complete the installation process there is one more thing to do: create the search table. So we run the following sql code:

CREATE TABLE `search_index` (
    `id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
    `association_key` int(11) NOT NULL,
    `model` varchar(128) collate utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
    `data` longtext collate utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
    `created` datetime NOT NULL,
    `modified` datetime NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY  (`id`),
    KEY `association_key` (`association_key`,`model`),
    FULLTEXT KEY `data` (`data`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci; So we are set up now, ready to add our nice search feature!

The actual search

First we need to add the searchable behavior to Post model.

Model Class:

<?php  <?php // app/models/post.php class Post extends AppModel {
    var $name = 'Post';
    var $actsAs = array ('Searchable');

    var $validate = array(
        'title' => array(
            'rule' => array('minLength', 1)
        ),
        'body' => array(
            'rule' => array('minLength', 1)
        )
    );
} ?> ?>To be able to search, we need to place a search box somewhere. Add the following snippet of code just after the page heading.

<?php 
    echo $form->create("Post",array('action' => 'search'));
    echo $form->input("q", array('label' => 'Search for'));
    echo $form->end("Search"); ?> We need to define the search action in our post controller.

<?php
    function search() {
        $this->set('results',$this->Post->search($this->data['Post']['q']));
    } ?> Finally we create the view for search results (which is just a slightly modified version of posts index):

View Template:


<?php // app/views/posts/search.ctp ?> <h1>Blog posts</h1>
<?php 
    echo $form->create("Post",array('action' => 'search'));
    echo $form->input("q", array('label' => 'Search for'));
    echo $form->end("Search"); ?> <p><?php echo $html->link("Add Post", "/posts/add"); ?> <table>
    <tr>
        <th>Id</th>
        <th>Title</th>
                <th>Action</th>
        <th>Created</th>
    </tr>

<!-- Here's where we loop through our $results array, printing out post info -->

<?php foreach ($results as $post): ?>     <tr>
        <td><?php echo $post['Post']['id']; ?></td>
        <td>
            <?php echo $html->link($post['Post']['title'],'/posts/view/'.$post['Post']['id']);?>                 </td>
                <td>
            <?php echo $html->link(
                'Delete', 
                "/posts/delete/{$post['Post']['id']}", 
                null, 
                'Are you sure?'
            )?>             <?php echo $html->link('Edit', '/posts/edit/'.$post['Post']['id']);?>         </td>
        <td><?php echo $post['Post']['created']; ?></td>
    </tr>
<?php endforeach; ?> </table> That's it! You now have a blog with a fully featured search engine.
For other ways of using the searchable behavior, check the project page on Google Code (http://code.google.com/p/searchable-behaviour-for-cakephp).