Use the RICO JavaScript Library, ColdFusion MX 7, and Windows Indexing Service to build a

Build an AJAX-enabled search page using the RICO JavaScript Library, ColdFusion MX 7, and Windows Indexing Service

A few months ago, I talked with some of my colleagues about the possibility of adding a search tool to an Intranet (as a wizard) and extending it to an enterprise Web site. One of the main goals of this proposal is to figure out which visitors are looking for Web content and changing the content accordingly. Some of us have conceived a fully customizable solution (I'm not joking). They recommend building tables on the database server to hold the keywords and their associated page addresses. Keyword extraction will be a manual process, and the keyword selection depends entirely on the person performing the selection. Queries on indexes are executed using the standard Structured Query Language (structured query language,sql).

But then there was a different view. We already have everything we need to implement this feature: a complete Windows environment for all servers and a Web development tool (ColdFusion) that has been used in-house for development. The only thing missing is a document about how to use this tool to implement this functionality. We can get a lot of information about Active Server Pages (ASP), but we're missing resources for ColdFusion. As the only one by one members of our team with the necessary skills, I smoothed up my sleeves and built the ColdFusion equivalent for ASP, which became our search tool. In the process, I decided to share with the community. Let's start with the introduction to everyone.

Introduce this tool

Before I describe the details of how to build the search tool, this section describes the tools that run through the full text. Each tool plays a specific role in the Final Solution: Rico JavaScript enhances the user experience when displaying results, ColdFusion MX 7 accesses the index and builds search results, and the Windows Indexing Service provides indexing infrastructure.

Rico JavaScript Library

The Rico JavaScript Library is an open-source asynchronous JavaScript + XML (AJAX) framework available under the Apache 2.0 licens. It looks at simplicity by adding support for any HTML page by providing a single JavaScript object.

To start using it, you must include a JavaScript library that provides the necessary functionality in the Hypertext Markup Language (hypertext Markup Language, HTML) page title:

<script　src="prototype.js"></script>
<script　src="rico.js"></script>

Doing so causes an instance of the Ajax engine to be created automatically and accessible through an object named Ajaxengine.

In addition to drag-and-drop support and animation effects, this Ajax framework also provides the following key features that I use in this article:

The standard extensible Markup Language (XML) Definition of the basic Ajax response.

The ability to link responses to specific HTML elements

Automatically update the InnerHTML property of a target HTML element using response content

ColdFusion MX 7

ColdFusion MX 7 is an application server and WEB development framework that can be used to develop high-performance dynamic Web sites. The strength of ColdFusion comes from its flexible language: ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML). The syntax of this language mimics HTML and is therefore easy to master. CFML provides a number of tags to encapsulate or extend HTML and perform conditional processing, interact with local file systems, perform HTTP or FTP operations, dynamically generate PDF files, connect to various data created by external applications, and so on. With all the built-in features and the flexibility to integrate with other applications or services, CFML can immediately meet all of your Web development needs.

Of course, you can use other languages to provide the search page shown in this article. You can use any Web language, such as PHP, ASP, or Ruby on Rails, as long as the language has access to Component object Model (COM) objects. This is the only requirement for accessing indexed content using the Windows Indexing Service.

Windows Indexing Service

Windows indexing Service is an underlying component that is installed on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 systems. Its role is to analyze document properties and content on file systems or WEB servers, and then build an index directory to facilitate the search for this data.

The installation can be checked in the Add/remove Windows Components section of the Add/remove Programs tool (which can be accessed directly from the control Panel) (see Figure 1):

Figure 1. Add/Remove Windows components