NAME

Ace::Browser::SearchSubs - Subroutines for AceBrowser search scripts

SYNOPSIS

            

              
              
use Ace;
use Ace::Browser::AceSubs;
use Ace::Browser::SearchSubs;
use CGI qw(:standard);
my $form = p(start_form,
      textfield(-name=>'query'),
      end_form);
AceSearchTable('Search for stuff',$form);
...
my $query  = param('query');
my $offset = AceSearchOffset;
my ($objects,$count) = do_search($query,$offset);
AceResultsTable($objects,$count,$offset,'Here are results');
            
          

DESCRIPTION

Ace::Browser::SearchSubs exports a set of constants and subroutines that are useful for creating AceBrowser search scripts.

CONSTANTS

This package exports the following constants:

            

              
              
MAXOBJECTS     The maximum number of objects that can be displayed
               per page.
SEARCH_ICON    An icon to use for search links. This is deprecated.
               Use Configuration->Search_icon instead.
            
          

FUNCTIONS

These functions are exported:

$offset = AceSearchOffset()

When the user is paging back and forth among a multi-page list of results, this function returns the index of the first item to display.

AceSearchTable([{hash}],$title,@contents)

Given a title and the HTML contents, this formats the search into a table and gives it the background and foreground colors used elsewhere for searches. The formatted search is then printed.

The HTML contents are usually a fill-out form. For convenience, you can provide the contents in multiple parts (lines or elements) and they will be concatenated together.

If the first argument is a hashref, then its contents will be passed to start_form() to override the form arguments.

AceResultsTable($objects,$count,$offset,$title)

This subroutine formats the results of a search into a pageable list and prints out the resulting HTML. The following arguments are required:

            

              
              
$objects   An array reference containing the objects to place in the
           table.
$count     The total number of objects.
$offset    The offset into the array, as returned by AceSearchOffset()
$title     A title for the table.
            
          

The array reference should contain no more than MAXOBJECTS objects. The AceDB query should be arranged in such a way that this is the case. A typical idiom is the following:

            

              
              
my $offset = AceSearchOffset();
my $query  = param('query');
my $count;
my @objs = $db->fetch(-query=> $query,
        -count  => MAXOBJECTS,
        -offset => $offset,
        -total => \$count
       );
AceResultsTable(\@objs,$count,$offset,'Here are the results');
            
          

BUGS

Please report them.

SEE ALSO

Ace::Object, Ace::Browser::SiteDefs, Ace::Browsr::AceSubs, the README.ACEBROWSER file.

AUTHOR

Lincoln Stein <lstein@cshl.org>.

Copyright (c) 2001 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See DISCLAIMER.txt for disclaimers of warranty.