Programming ColdFusion MX, 2nd Edition

Searching Collections

Once you have created and populated a Verity collection, you will naturally want to provide a means for users to search its contents. The cfsearch tag provides just such capability. Using the cfsearch tag, ColdFusion allows you to build sophisticated searching into your applications. In its simplest form, cfsearch can perform the searching operation directly against a Verity collection without the user having to enter anything for the search criteria. A popular use for this technique is in the creation of “top ten” lists of search terms. This technique is covered later in the Section 16.7 section of this chapter. For now, let’s take a look at a basic example that demonstrates how to use the cfsearch tag to search a Verity collection without the user having to enter the search criteria:

<cfsearch collection="cfdocumentation" name="MySearchQuery" type="Simple"
          criteria="Verity" language="English" external="No">
<cfoutput query="MySearchQuery">
   <a href="/cfdocs/#MySearchQuery.URL#">#MySearchQuery.Title#</a><br>
</cfoutput>

The collection attribute is required and specifies the name of the collection you wish to search or, in the case of externally generated collections, the full path to the collection directory. Multiple collections may be searched provided the collection names or paths are separated by commas. When specifying multiple collections, you can’t mix internal and external collections, nor can you have VDK and K2 collections in the same search operation. ...