Search API Series - Creating a Search Page with Views, Faceted Searches, Using Autocomplete While Typing, and Suggesting Alternative Search Phrases | Modules Unraveled
Creating a More Flexible Search Page Using Search Views
The Search Views module is distributed with the Search API module. This module integrates the Search API module with the Views module and gives us the ability to use the power of Views for filtering, sorting and most importantly displaying search results.
In this video, I will show you how to install and enable the Views module and create a view that will display the search results. In the process we will add an exposed filter which will provide the search functionality.
Creating Faceted Search Interfaces
Facets are a great tool to help guide your users to the information they are looking for. Its a way of narrowing down the items that are visible on the screen. They perform a similar function to exposed filters in Views, but are more flexible, and performant.
The Search API project comes with another extension module that integrates the Search API with the Facet API, the Search Facets module. Search Facets provides the ability to create facets on any search executed anywhere in Drupal. So, in this video, I will you show how to install and enable Search Facets and configure facet blocks.
Creating a Content Type for Our Items
In the following videos, we'll be installing modules to perform various search functions. So, in this video, we will create a content type for Items that are for sale. It will have fields for item name, location of the item, file attachments and price so that we can search based on those fields.
Using Search API Autocomplete to Suggest Search Terms While Typing
The Search API Autocomplete module adds autocomplete functionality to Search API searches. Autocomplete only works for servers that support it, and currently, only the Solr and database service classes are known to support this feature. In this video, I will show you how to setup Search API Autocomplete, to add the autocomplete functionality to our site.
Suggesting Alternative Search Phrases with Search API Spellcheck
The Search API Spellcheck module provides spelling suggestions for Search API searches. This can be especially handy when there are no results for a searched term. In this video, I will show you how to enable this feature for the Search view.