Tag: Refiners

Dynamically generating complex pre-refined search result page URLs

I while ago I blogged about creating a static link to a pre-refined (pre-filtered) search page. This post follows that idea to it’s natural conclusion by providing a number of JavaScript functions which can dynamically create search result page URLs. These URLs will look something like this:

https://tenant.sharepoint.com/search#Default=%7B%22k%22%3A%22article%22%2C%22r%22%3A%5B%7B%22n%22%3A%22RefinableString20%22%2C%22t%22%3A%5B%22%5C%22%C7%82%C7%824275696c64%5C%22%22%5D%2C%22o%22%3A%22OR%22%2C%22k%22%3Afalse%2C%22m%22%3A%7B%22%5C%22%C7%82%C7%824275696c64%5C%22%22%3A%22Build%22%7D%7D%2C%7B%22n%22%3A%22RefinableString21%22%2C%22t%22%3A%5B%22%5C%22%C7%82%C7%824c6f6e646f6e%5C%22%22%5D%2C%22o%22%3A%22OR%22%2C%22k%22%3Afalse%2C%22m%22%3A%7B%22%5C%22%C7%82%C7%824c6f6e646f6e%5C%22%22%3A%22London%22%7D%7D%5D%7D

The provided scripts support filtering on:

  • a search term
  • multiple refiners
  • multiple values for a refiner, or
  • any combination of the above

It would be worth reading the intro of my earlier article to get a better understanding of what is happening in the snippets provided in this post.

Default Enterprise Search Centre
Default Enterprise Search Centre

OF NOTE:

  • As the most common usage will surely be to produce search result page URLs that are refined on a single value, I have written an ‘overload’ function that simplifies calling the method in this scenario
  • The ‘search page URL’ can be provided to the functions in a number of ways including:
    • “/search” : to the web. The default page for that web. In the case of an Enterprise Search Centre this will be the ‘Everything’ search results page
    • “/search/Pages/peopleresults.aspx” : to the page
    • Use an absolute URL if you are out of the context of the SharePoint Online tenant in which the search page resides. This will be true for provider hosted add-ins (apps)
    • If you are writing your own refiner, then pass an empty string and set window.location.hash to the result of the function
  • This script has no dependencies on other libraries (jQuery, SP.js, etc)
  • The hex encoded string must be UTF-8 encoded. JavaScript is natively UTF-16. The particular scenario where this raised an issue for me was the wide-ampersand character which is often used instead of a standard ampersand as it is XML friendly. ‘unescape’ returns a UTF-8 encoded string and is used to force the required encoding. Thanks to ecmanaut for this solution
  • I took inspiration for the stringToHex method from a post by pussard

The functions:

var getPreRefinedSearchPageUrl = function (searchPageUrl, searchTerm, managedPropertyName, managedPropertyValue) {
  return getComplexPreRefinedSearchPageUrl({
    searchPageUrl: searchPageUrl,
    searchTerm: searchTerm,
    refiners: [
      {
        managedPropertyName: managedPropertyName,
        managedPropertyValues: [
          managedPropertyValue
        ]
      }
    ]
  });
};

// input:
// {
//   searchPageUrl: "/search/Pages/results.aspx",
//   searchTerm: "",
//   refiners: [
//     {
//       managedPropertyName: "RefinableString08",
//       managedPropertyValues: [
//         "Human Resources"
//       ]
//     }
//   ]
// }
var getComplexPreRefinedSearchPageUrl = function (data) {
  var searchObj = {
    "k": data.searchTerm,
    "r": []
  };
  for (var i = 0; i < data.refiners.length; i++) {
    var refiner = data.refiners[i];
    var searchObjRefiner = {
      "n": refiner.managedPropertyName,
      "t": [],
      "o": "OR",
      "k": false,
      "m": {}
    };
    for (var j = 0; j < refiner.managedPropertyValues.length; j++) {
      var refinerValue = refiner.managedPropertyValues[j];
      // Force UTF8 encoding to handle special characters, specifically full-width ampersand
      var managedPropertyValueUTF8 = unescape(encodeURIComponent(refinerValue)); 
      var managedPropertyValueHex = stringToHex(managedPropertyValueUTF8);
      var managedPropertyValueHexToken = "\"ǂǂ" + managedPropertyValueHex + "\"";
      searchObjRefiner.t.push(managedPropertyValueHexToken);
      searchObjRefiner.m[managedPropertyValueHexToken] = refinerValue;
      searchObj.r.push(searchObjRefiner);
    }
  }
  var seachObjString = JSON.stringify(searchObj);
  var searchObjEncodedString = encodeURIComponent(seachObjString);
  var url = data.searchPageUrl + "#Default=" + searchObjEncodedString;
  return url;
};

var stringToHex = function (tmp) {
  var d2h = function (d) {
    return d.toString(16);
  };
  var str = '',
    i = 0,
    tmp_len = tmp.length,
    c;
  for (; i < tmp_len; i += 1) {
    c = tmp.charCodeAt(i);
    str += d2h(c);
  }
  return str;
};

These are examples of how to call the function that are defined above.

var complexUrl = getComplexPreRefinedSearchPageUrl({
  searchPageUrl: "/search/Pages/results.aspx",
  searchTerm: "article",
  refiners: [
    {
      managedPropertyName: "RefinableString20",
      managedPropertyValues: [
        "Build", "Land"
      ]
    },
    {
      managedPropertyName: "RefinableString21",
      managedPropertyValues: [
        "London"
      ]
    }
  ]
});
var basicUrl = getPreRefinedSearchPageUrl("/search/Pages/results.aspx", "", "RefinableString20", "Build");

Paul.

Linking to pre-filtered or ‘refined’ search results

Good news – it really is very easy to have links to pre-filtered search pages (search pages with active refiners). This post will give an example of linking to search page with a single active refiner but you should be able to extend the example to more complex scenarios if you wish.

EDIT: I have written a more recent post which provides JavaScript functions to generate these links dynamically

refiner

Cut to the chase

This is what you are looking for, I’ll explain it in depth below:

<Server Relative URL of Search Page>
#Default=%7B%22k%22:%22%22,%22r%22:%5B%7B%22n%22:%22
<Managed Property Name>
%22,%22t%22:%5B%22%5C%22ǂǂ
<HEX Encoded Managed Property Value>
%5C%22%22%5D,%22o%22:%22OR%22,%22k%22:false%7D%5D%7D

e.g.
/search/Pages/results.aspx
#Default=%7B%22k%22:%22%22,%22r%22:%5B%7B%22n%22:%22
RefinableString08
%22,%22t%22:%5B%22%5C%22ǂǂ
506f6c696379
%5C%22%22%5D,%22o%22:%22OR%22,%22k%22:false%7D%5D%7D

You can quickly perform HEX encoding using an online tool such as this.

(The above URLs have been separated on to new lines for readability but should not contain any white space)

Breaking it down

As you have probably already noticed, by applying a filter to a search results page you are appending a hash (or anchor) to the query string. This value is a URL encoded JSON object. Once decoded it looks something like this:

You can quickly perform URL decoding using an online tool such as this.

Importantly for our purposes we can see the name of the managed property on which we are refining “RefinableString08”.

The value is a little more obfuscated. The value ‘5265706f7274’ is in fact the HEX encoded value which we want to refine on. It is vital the “t” property is set to this value prepended by the two “ǂ” characters. The “m” property appears to define a mapping between the HEX encoded value and original value but it does not appear to be necessary.

Reducing the length to fit such that it can be used as a ‘Simple Link’ in a navigation term

A navigation term only supports a limited number of characters in its ‘simple link’ field, approximately 260. This means that the full encoded JS object as above will breach this limit if the managed property value is greater than about 8 characters (if using a ‘RefinableStringXX’ managed property). Not great. However, it turns out that the “m” property of the object is optional, at least when performing simple refinement as we are here. The example I provided at the top of this post has this property excluded in order to reduce it’s length.

 

Paul.