Massive Wiki Wednesday, 2022-06-15

MWB Search

Various Goals

• as a website visitor, I can do a full-text search over the whole wiki
• as a website visitor, I can start typing and see type-ahead results appear in real-time
• as an MWB developer, I want to experiment with UX of a search box and search results
• as an MWB developer, I want to experiment with UX of a type-ahead results
• as an MWB developer, I want to experiment with Elasticlunr

Some approaches for experimenting with search.

Approach 1 - simple crowbar Elasticlunr into MWB

• install a search box in page.html (or header, or whatever)
• in mwb.py, write a JSON index that Elasticlunr can read
• hook up the search box to Elasticlunr
• profit!

Approach 2 - play with an Elasticlunr how-to

• don't use MWB yet
• use an Elasticlunr "how-to", follow it verbatim
• profit!

Approach 3 - try search, but not Elasticlunr

• install a search box in page.html (or header, or whatever)
• in mwb.py, write a database/index (maybe sqlite3?) that we can read
• hook up the search box to some code we wrote that can read the database/index
• present search results

Approach 4 - UX of search + search results

• install a search box in page.html (or header, or whatever)
• write the simplest possible code that would return mock search results