I have assembled a template that I like a lot and that works really well for us. The problem is that I don't have a search box where the user can enter a name or partial name and get a list of matches.

I searched this forum and found several others that have had similar questions - all resulting in the news that it won't do that.

Given that there are several of us interested in this capability, here is my feature request: Add the capability to have template-driven views support searching. I could see an approach like this:

In the template code we add code like...



...that lets the user enter a partial name. On Page_Load, the DMX template module looks-for a posted value in a field with this special name and, if found (and not Blank/Empty) then it would filter the results by the specified value.

For Peter this would require:
(1) a new tag called [dmxmodule:searchname] that renders a specific HTML NAME for the input field
(2) a new tag called [dmxmodule:searchvalue] that renders the HtmlEncoded value of the value just received in the search input.
(3) the PageLoad to look-for a value specified in a form field with the right name above.

This should work nicely and would allow full templating of the search and would allow the same VIEW template mechanism to also function as a SEARCH template.

Thoughts?

I'll make a note of this. I need to do more research, but my gut feeling is that this is doable.

Question: what should the module display when you first land on the page? I.e. when you've not yet entered a search string?

Note 1: You can already "hack" something similar. You add a DMX with the search panel UI to page X. Then you make it hop to a second page with DMX with your template. Make sure, in your template, to use "searchresults" instead of "entrylist" and the record set used to display is the search results. Downside: you need to hop back to refine your search. So maybe not an option in your case.

Note 2: this would just do a so-called quicksearch. Meaning searching for the text in a specific set of fields. It is a lot harder to build something that works like the advanced search panel.

Peter