Working with SharePoint Foundation Search API

• Search can only get results inside a site collection (works only on a single site collection at a time)
• Does not index external data source
• There are 2 query option
  • Query Object Model reside in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Query namespace
    • There are 3 option to build a search queries
      • Keyword Syntax – search terms are passed directly to the Search service (basic query)
        • There are 2 type of terms
          • Keywords
            • A word
            • A phrase (more than one word separated by space and enclosed with ” “)
            • A prefix (a part of word the beginning of the word( “+followed by this word” or “-not followed by this word”))
          • Property filters (narrow the focus of the keyword search by manipulating the metadata, e.g. author:John or author:”John Cena” if there’s space)

          

      • SQL syntax – extension of SQL syntax for querying database (constructing complex queries)
        • Same syntax as normal SQL query

          

        • Dissecting the SQL structure
          • SELECT – must specify at least one column and SELECT * won’t work
          • FROM – specify where to search, FROM scope where “scope” = ‘All Site’ (the only available scope for SPF)
          • WHERE – specify condition, support two search predicate
            • FREETEXT = search the query everywhere
              • use FREETEXT(*,”‘+txtsearch+'”) or FREETEXT(defaultproperties, “‘+txtsearch+'”) for all columns of the metadata or FREETEXT(columnName,”‘+txtsearch+'”) for a specific metadata
            • CONTAIN = does an exact match
            • LIKE = ModifiedBy LIKE ‘%”+txtsearch+”%’
            • ORDER BY = ORDER By RANK DESC
        • Querying in SharePoint example

          

        • Available field or column (SELECT Size,Path..).

          

        • Only these fields are available in SharePoint Foundation, SharePoint Server can include our own field by going to the Central Administration -> Search Setting -> Metadata property Mappings.
        • This means, if we add our own filed e.g. Meeting Date, we can perform search on this using FREETEXT(*,”‘+searchtext+'”) because this field will be indexed by SPF. But we can’t do a search on this field alone e.g. MeetingDate = “‘+searchText'” and also we can’t select this field like SELECT MeetingDate.
        • To get more details on this, check out this blog
      • URL syntax –     search parameter are encoded in the URL and posted directly to the search page. E.g. results.aspx?k=sharepoint%20searc
        • Parameters

          

        • A great article on how to use this technique to generate FullTextSqlQuery
  • Query Web Service based on http://Server_Name/%5BSite_Name/%5D_vti_bin/spsearch.asmx (for SharePoint Search)
    • Steps to perform the query in Console Application
      • Add service reference to the project

        

      • Open up the app.config file that is generated and find the security section and replace it with the text below

        

      • Add the code below to configure the soap client for query request

        

      • The “QueryServiceSoap” can be found in the app.config under the client section

        

      • Define and execute a query (based the query either on keyword or FullTextSqlQuery)

        

        

      • Get and display the results

        

      • More detail can be found here and SharePoint Search forum

SharePoint Query Object Model – SPSiteDataQuery

• Query Lists in a site collection (SPQuery can only search item in one particular list)
• “Represents a query that can be performed across multiple lists in multiple Web sites in the same Web site collection.” – MSDN
• Using this query

  

• SPSIteDataQuery properties

  

• Lists property is used to set specify which lists to include in the query :-
  • “<Lists ServerTemplate=’104′ />” – by default it is not set

    

    Get more here

  • “<Lists BaseTemplate=’0′ />” – default is 0 which is generis list

    

  • “<Lists Hidden=’true’ />” – include hiiden lists in the query, default is false
  • “<Lists MaxListLimit=’500′ /> – default is 1000, if it set to 0 then there is no limit. The query will throw an exception if the results found exceed the limit set.
  • Lists sub elements – If you wants to include a specific lists, you can do so using the List ID

    

• Webs property is used to set:-
  • “<Web Scope=’SiteCollection’ /> – include all lists in the site collection
  • “<Web Scope=’Recursive’ />” – include only lists from the current site and the site beneath it.
• Check out his site for the performance of all the SharePoint query object model

  

  • And also this site for using CAMLEX.Net (use Lambda expression to write CAML queries)