Configure a portlet that retrieves and displays search
results from third-party search engines, then add the External Search
Results portlet to the Search Center.
About this task
The External Search Results is a specialized portlet that
administrators can add to Portal Search. When you add that portlet
to Portal Search, the results of a search that is initiated from the Search
page include results from third-party external search engines. You
can add more than one copy of the External Search Results portlet
to the Portal Search page, and you can configure each of these to
display a specific number of search results.Note: - You must be logged in as Administrator to add an External Search
Results portlet to the Search Center.
- The External Search Results portlet can only be added to the Search Center on the Portal Search
page. It does not function anywhere else.
To add the External Search Results portlet to the Portal Search
page and configure it, proceed as follows:
Procedure
- Optional: Add the portlet to the Search Center. You only need to do this if the External Search Results portlet
was removed from the Search Center.
- From the main portal menu, click .
- Locate the Search Center page by clicking .
- Click Edit Page Layout.
- Click Add Portlets.
- Select the External Search Results portlet by clicking
the check box.
- Click OK to add the portlet
to the page.
- Click Done.
- Navigate to the Search Center page. The External Search
Results portlet is now available for use.
- Configure the External Search Results portlet:
- From the main portal menu, click .
- In the list of portlets, locate External
Search Results, and click the Configure icon.
- Edit the value of the searchEngineUrl parameter. This value represents the URL of the third-party search
engine that you want to be queried. The value of the searchEngineUrl parameter returns a feed of search results for the specified search
terms. The feed is in RSS or Atom syndication format. The string ${searchTerms} must be included in the value. This string
is replaced by the actual query during the search. For example:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/views/rss/customrssatom.jsp?zone_by=Lotus&search_by=${searchTerms}
- Optional: Edit the value of the parameter searchEngineFullPageUrl. This parameter is optional.
You can delete it or leave it empty. When you set this parameter,
a More link is added to the portlet. It links
to the website of the external search engine. The value represents
a parameterized form of the URL used to locate the search engine that
is queried. The string ${searchTerms} must be included
in the parameter value. During the search the portlet replaces the
string by the actual query. For example:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/search/searchResults.jsp?searchSite=dW&searchScope=dW&query=${searchTerms}
This URL should return the public HTML page of the
search engine.
- Edit the value of the numOfEntries parameter. This parameter determines the maximum number of search results which will be displayed.
The default number is 3, but you can enter a different numeric value
to increase the maximum.
- Optional: If the external search engine
returns search results in a format that is not supported, or if the
provided rendering of the search results is not acceptable, an XSLT
file can be specified. Edit the value of the externalXsltUrl parameter to supply a URL for such an external XSLT file.
Note: The XSLT does not create an entire HTML document, but an HTML
fragment that can be embedded inside a page.
- On the page for editing the preference searchEngineFullPageUrl, click OK.
- On the page for configuring the External Search Results
portlet, click OK to save your changes.
- If you want to add external search engines, or modify the
existing search engine, you also need to modify the proxy configuration
of the portlet. All HTTP requests from the portlet to the external
search engines are directed through the HTTP Proxy for Ajax Applications, which is
included in the portal. The External Search Results portlet includes
an application-specific configuration for this proxy. In a standard portal installation it
allows only connections to the URL of the default external search
engine http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/views/rss/*. To change this, you need to modify the proxy-config.xml file that is bundled with the portlet by completing the following
steps:
- Go to the file searchCenter.war in
the directory PortalServer_root/search/wp.search.portlets/search/portlet/installableApps.
- Edit the file proxy-config.xml . It
is in the directory WEB-INF .
- Add a new proxy:policy element, or
modify the existing one as required. For more information, refer to Examples of AJAX proxy configurations. The current policy
element allows connections to the following URL: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/views/rss/* . You can change the URL attribute to specify another site, for
example http://www.ibm.com/products/* . If you want
to add several instances of the portlet on a page that show search
results from different sources, duplicate the proxy:policy element. Add a policy element for each instance
of the portlet, with the URL attribute matching the search source
as required.
- Repackage the WAR file and update the Search Center Web
module.
Searches by users will now be performed by the modified
search configuration.