Error message displayed on search results screen or search results screen is blank

An error occurred in the search system

This indicates something went wrong with when padre processed the query. This could be an issue with the indexes (such as a corrupted or missing index), or it could be a result of padre returning malformed XML to the modern UI which then cannot be parsed into the data model.

Inspect the source code of the search results page (select view page source in your browser window) - there may be additional information such as a Java stack dump inside HTML comments. Also inspect the modern ui logs for the search package that you are querying (indicated by the collection parameter in the URL.

It is also worth checking the search.json response which may include a more details.

Blank search results page

A blank search results page could be a result of the following:

  • it could indicate that a server error occurred - check the modernui.log for the search package you are querying to see if an error was logged.

  • the template may not have been configured correctly - it may not return anything if there are no search results, or if no query is supplied.

  • if the search results are wrapped by a CMS (e.g. that parses the Funnelback JSON) then there might be an error recorded by the CMS.

Stack trace returned within the search results page

If template debugging has been enabled you may see a stack trace returned within the search results page.

This error will provide information on the cause of the problem. You may need to view the HTML source to see a full error message.