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venkat-rk@drupal.org's picture
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Can someone point to options for searching an ubercart store?

I am using both the default 'product' type (SKU hidden) and a 'book' CCK content type (SKU hidden) created using Ubercart's product classes. The CCK content type has text fields such as author (select list), ISBN (text field) and publisher (select list).

Which modules can I use to present to the user a search block or page on the lines of ZenCart's search features?

I have already tried faceted_search with CCK_facets (to expose the CCK text fields), but it seems way too complicated.

Thanks,
Venkatesh

zeezhao's picture
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Re: Search options for Ubercart store?

Some other options include:

- ApacheSolr and its drupal interface (http://drupal.org/project/apachesolr)
ubercart.org uses this.

- Sphinx and its drupal interface (http://drupal.org/project/sphinxsearch )

venkat-rk@drupal.org's picture
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Re: Re: Search options for Ubercart store?

Thank you for the links.

ApacheSolr is out of the equation as the site is on shared hosting. So, it seems, is sphinx.

Actually, the client is looking for something like this:

That's the zencart site being rebuilt in Ubercart.

Ryan's picture
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Re: Re: Re: Search options for Ubercart store?

My hunch is you can get something like this using exposed filters in a View. You'll have to theme it like crazy, because by default they show up in a horizontal table, but you can have select lists for the various fields and even a field for matching or approximating ISBNs.

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Search options for Ubercart store?

the other side note is Axquia is close to beta launch of the hosted Apachesolr search service allowing shared hosted sites to benefit from apachesolr.

venkat-rk@drupal.org's picture
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thill wrote:the other side
thill wrote:

the other side note is Axquia is close to beta launch of the hosted Apachesolr search service allowing shared hosted sites to benefit from apachesolr.

The client's deadline is next week, so I am not sure that's going to work out Smiling

Actually, using the faceted_search and associated modules are a good alternative to ApacheSolr, as this link explains:
http://civicactions.com/blog/faceted_search_as_a_valid_alternative_to_ap...

venkat-rk@drupal.org's picture
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My hunch is you can get
Ryan wrote:

My hunch is you can get something like this using exposed filters in a View.

Exposed filters is exactly what I had in mind, Ryan. But I haven't been able to get it going for some reason.

I experimented with faceted_search and cck_facets, and while I like many aspects of it, I wonder if they're worth the database hit involved.

BigMike's picture
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zeezhao wrote: Some other
zeezhao wrote:

Some other options include:

- ApacheSolr and its drupal interface (http://drupal.org/project/apachesolr)
ubercart.org uses this.

- Sphinx and its drupal interface (http://drupal.org/project/sphinxsearch )

zeezhao: I am already running Sphinx Search on my server (using it for super fast searches on our 1-million post community forum) so this would be super easy for me to implement with Drupal (I only need to enable the module Laughing out loud)

My sandbox test-site runs on my WinXP laptop (XAMPP) which doesn't have Sphinx (I could always try to install it!) so the only way for me to test it out would be on my live production site, which I'd rather test it out before doing so first (especially since the module is still in development).

Sorry for the rambling, here is my Question: Have you used the Sphinx module? Does it include SKU search ability straight outta the box? If you have experience with this, would you mind sharing any useful tips for me to get it going?

Thank you very much for your help!!
Regards,
BigMike

zeezhao's picture
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sphinxsearch module

Yes, I have used http://drupal.org/project/sphinxsearch module on D5 and D6. Follow its readme

It does SKU search straight out of box, once index built.

You can install XP version from here: http://sphinxsearch.com/downloads/release/

Its been a while now... So can only answer specific issues or questions.

BigMike's picture
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Thank you for the reply. I

Thank you for the reply.

I got sphinsearch uploaded to my modules folder, have not enabled it yet, and was setting things up as per the instructions in the read me.

I am not sure what to do however; Can I have 1 instance of Sphinx installed on my machine and have it manage two different indexes? The reason I ask is because my forum is currently using Sphinx, so the configuration file at /usr/local/etc/sphinx.conf is already configured for my forum.

I wonder if I will need to modify the sphinxsearch module to look for a different sphinx configuration file, such as maybe /usr/local/etc/sphinx-smf.conf

What do you think? Again, thank you VERY MUCH for your help with this!!
BigMike

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Re: Thank you for the reply. I

You need to read the doc/sphinx.html file that comes in the sphinx zip file.

There is a "--config" flag that can be passed to indexer or searchd to determine where to read conf file.

My own installation was 1 conf file but with partitioned inde. I did this since number of nodes being over 2 million, hence to speed up building each index and enable to run on machine with low memory.

venkat-rk@drupal.org's picture
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Re: Search options for Ubercart store?

Just in case anyone is interested, the views_filterblock module lets you convert the default, horizontal filters on a view into a drupal block that you can customize like any other drupal block without all the headache of theming.

My problem is that, to get these exposed filters, I have to use views, which means I probably have to override the default catalog pages with a view and so on. Sounds troublesome to me just to get a block with drop-downs to filter based on CCK fields.

Still searching for an easier way. Sad

Edit: This was in response to Ryan's post above.