If all you want is an Amazon like search you may be interested in this DEMO on building your own. The demo source file (also online) shows how to call the two relevant files:
<?php
error_reporting(-1); ini_set('display_errors','1');
define('LOCALHOST','localhost'===$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']);
$title = 'Ajax Search Routine';
$sp = 'https://www.sitepoint.com/community/t/search-when-iconv-fails/209863';
$live = 'http://www.johns-jokes.com/downloads/sp-e/jb-ajax-search/';
?><!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang="en-GB">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title><?=$title;?></title>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<link href="style-ajax-search.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<body>
<div class='hdg rn0'>
<?php /* ONLY REQUIRED FOR DEMO */ require '_banner.php';?>
</div>
<div id="content" class="w88 mga bgs p42">
<?php require '_ajax-form.php';?>
<!--
ESSENTIAL:
'_ajax-form.php' and 'db-results.php'
MUST BE IN THIS DIRECTORY
-->
</div>
</body>
</html>
For your own installation, two files are required, ajax-form.php and db-results.php. The latter script requires a database and the following connection constants to be defined:
define(‘HOST’, ‘yourHost’);
define(‘uNAME’, ‘userName’);
define(‘pWORD’, ‘passWord’);
define(‘dBASE’, ‘dataBase’);
define(‘dTABLE’, ‘tableName’);
define(‘dCOL001’,‘column_1st’);
define(‘dCOL002’, NULL); // if NOT used otherwise column name
Entering text into the search dynamically displays the MySQL search results which are formatted with the db-results Html script.
LOL - @John_Betong - Your demo is AWESOME and thanks for making it generally available. I was already all over it a few days before you arrived.
In the end, because the features we need seem to all have already been created in a similar system using Drupal, I have reluctantly decided to use… Drupal. We’re going to go with Drupal 7 for now even though Drupal 8 looks really cool and seems to have a lot done. I was warned that modules may not be compatible and get used to incompatibilities every step of the way as Drupal 8 becomes refined. I noticed that the code base is now HUGE and we are talking 30+ MB HUGE.
Just so everyone who was following and may follow will know and might benefit, I just found that recreating the entire system with custom development will invite problems should we ever leave. I was asked to make sure that someone else taking over can continue to run the project and I do know they have Drupal developers there. In addition tot he Faceted Search like Amazon, there are some other important features that will unquestionably take time to build from scratch:
Searches saved to user accounts
Multi-language document management (Drupal does both the interface and, more importantly, handles content translations more elegantly such as the same content body in several different languages.)
Relationships between files/nodes with arbitrary relationships (which is what the “Relations” module supposedly does and creates tabs for relating nodes)
Handling of Documents to either use the text or the document itself
Ease in printing out documents to different formats such as RTF, Word, PDF, HTML
The drill down Amazon search described above but also using a variety of different interfaces and predefined fields, such as dates.
Thank you everyone SO MUCH for helping me think through this problem and the discovery of all these great tools and information.
Drupal 8 has so much more to offer out of the box than 7. More than enough to typically make up for the lack of production ready contrib modules that might be available in 7. Not to mention everyone is going to begin abandoning 7 sooner rather than latter. Drupal 8 while more complex is just such a better system from every stand-point. Things are moving quick in the Drupal community. A production commerce module is expected within a couple of months. Things move quick the community is very accessible.
I don’t disagree with you but the problem is whether the specific modules I NEED are available out of the box immediately. For example, the multilingual capabilities that translate nodes into various different languages easily, the saved searches, etc. and the fact that so much of it is rumored “in progress.” In theory it has way more to offer and everything about the new install seems smoother. But if I’ve got to have programmers fixing bugs every few weeks and upgrade releases regularly, it’s like asking for trouble. I’m probably best having a system that runs and then migrating the site to Drupal 8 when it’s ready. From what I’ve read, most Drupal developers don’t want to start thinking of coding new products in Drupal 8 until the start of 2017 at earliest. If you’re a developer, I’d be willing to talk (as I need to hire someone too) but this seems to be relatively unanimous… but hey, I could be wrong.
