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Search-based auto-completion

Funnelback has a native auto-completion system (suggest.json) that suggests completions as the user types. This auto-completion system uses a JSON REST API to provide suggestions based on the user’s partially entered query using a lightweight search algorithm. This ensures that suggestions are returned quickly and with minimal load on the server.

In some cases however, there may be a need to use the full text search algorithm to provide suggestions to the user. In doing this however, we face a couple of challenges:

  • The user has not entered the full query they are looking for. We may only have queries like "con" or "dav" not giving a lot of context to what the user is searching for yet.

  • The time it takes to run a full query using the standard search algorithm is slower than using the native autocompletion system

To overcome these challenges we can take the following steps:

  • Utilize the top suggestions from the native autocomplete and perform a full text search based on these suggestions

  • Limit the data returned by the result packet

  • Turn off unnecessary search features or settings

Occasionally Funnelback’s auto-completion is too basic to service the needs of a user, and it becomes necessary to use a standard Funnelback results page and query to supply the auto-completion.

The following process can be used to setup search based auto-completion.

The use of search-based auto-completion is not recommended and should be avoided unless other auto-completion options have been exhausted. Funnelback’s built-in auto-completion system is designed for speed (and minimal system overhead when the request is processed). Using a standard query to produce query completion can result in significant load being placed on the server as a query can be fired for each user keystroke.

Setup process

  1. Create a results page that will be used to deliver auto-completion suggestions

  2. Add the following to the query processor options for the results page to ensure the query is optimized.

    -stem=0 -SM=off -rmcf=[dummyvalue] -spelling=off -contextual_navigation=false -QL=0 -log=false -countgbits=  -collapsing=false -show_qsyntax_tree=off

  3. Add the following custom Freemarker template to the results page:

    qc.ftl
    <#ftl output_format="JSON" encoding="utf-8" />
<#import "/web/templates/modernui/funnelback_classic.ftl" as s/>
<#import "/web/templates/modernui/funnelback.ftl" as fb/>
<#if question.inputParameters?seq_contains("callback")>${question.inputParameters["callback"]?first}(</#if>[
<@s.AfterSearchOnly>
<#if response.resultPacket.resultsSummary.totalMatching != 0>
<@s.Results>
<#if s.result.class.simpleName != "TierBar">
{
"key" : "<#if question.inputParameters?seq_contains("partial_query")>${question.inputParameters["partial_query"]?first}</#if>",
"disp" : "${s.result.title}",
"disp_t" : "T",
"wt" : "${s.result.score}",
"cat" : "",
"cat_t" : "1",
"action" : "${s.result.clickTrackingUrl}",
"action_t" : "U"
}<#if (s.result.rank < response.resultPacket.resultsSummary.currEnd)>,</#if>
</#if>
</@s.Results>
</#if>
</@s.AfterSearchOnly>]
<#if question.inputParameters?seq_contains("callback")>)</#if>

  4. Enable the query language - wildcard (truncation) support plugin.

  5. Add the following options to the results page configuration:

    auto-completion.program

    ../s/search.html

    ui.modern.form.qc.content_type

    application/javascript

    partial_query_expansion_index

    8 1

    Note: set 1 as per the plugin setup instructions.