Tag Archives: Search

Building SharePoint 2016 development environment – Part 14 – Enterprise Search Centre

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A few years ago I wrote “Build your SharePoint 2013 development machine on Windows Server 2012” series, I mainly work in the cloud now, but as the blogs was so popular, I thought I would create a new series for the newer version of SharePoint.

You can access other parts of this post below.

Creating a vanity name

  • Log into your domain controller. In Start type DNS and open the DNS Manager.
  • In the left hand pane, expand Forward Lookup Zones and click on cfcode2016.com
  • Right click on cfcode2016.com and select New Host (A or AAAA)…
  • Put in the name search, put the IP address point to the SharePoint Server. 192.168.137.200. Click Add Host

Search Centre Web application

We are now going to create a new Web Application for our Search center site. We are going to create a path-based site collection.

  1. From the start menu, type SharePoint 2016 Central Administration and open the site.
  2. Select Application Management > Manage Web Applications.
  3. In the ribbon click the New icon
  4. In the Create New Web Application dialog leave Create a new IIS web site selected and set up the following
    1. Name: SharePoint Search – 33333,
    2. Port:33333
    3. Host Header: <Leave Blank>
    4. Path: <Leave as default>
    5. Allow Anonymous: No
    6. Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL): Yes
    7. Claims authentication Types: Leave as is, enabled, integrated, NTLM
    8. Application Pool: Search – 33333
    9. Select Security Account: CFCODE2016\SP_Search
    10. Database Name: SP_SearchDB
  5. Click OK.
  6. After Web Application created, click OK.

IIS Bindings and AAMs.

  • . In Start type IIS and open IIS Manager
  • Navigate to SharePoint Search -33333 and then on the right hand panel, click Bindings…
  • On the Bindings dialog, select the bindings for port 33333 and click Edit
  • Leave the host name blank, but select your certificate. Click Ok
  • Click Add
  • In the Add Site Binding page, select https from the Type dropdown, leave the IP address as All Unassigned, the Port should say 443. Ensure you tick Require Server Name Indication. Enter the Host name as search.cfcode2016.com then select your certificate. Click OK
  • Open SharePoint 2016 Central Administration and select Application Management then Configure alternative access mappings.
  • On the right of the screen, change the Alternate Access Mapping Collection to SharePoint Search -33333
  • Click on the only entry https://cfsp2016:33333 and edit it to say https://search.cfcode2016.com, click OK.
  • Click Add Internal URLs enter https://cfsp2016:33333 click Save.
  • Click Add Internal URLs enter https://cfsp2016.cfcode2016.com:33333 click Save.

Create Search Centre Site Collection

  1. From Central Administration landing page, select Application Management then select Create site collections
  2. Ensure the Web Application is https://search.cfcode2016.com then enter the following information:
    1. Title: Enterprise Search
    2. URL: /
    3. Template Selection: Enterprise > Enterprise Search Center
    4. Primary Site Collection Admin: SP_Setup
  3. Click OK.
  4. Once site is created, just click OK.

Give All users visitors access to Search.

  1. Once the site has been created, navigate to https://search.cfcode2016.com
  2. Go to Site Settings. Click the Cog icon at the top right of the page, then select Site Settings.
  3. Under Users and Permissions, click Site Permissions
  4. Click on Enterprise Search Visitors.
  5. On the menu bar, click New > Add Users
  6. Type and select Everyone. Click Share.

Configure Search Service Settings

  1. Back in Central Administration, select Application Management then Manage service applications.
  2. Click on Search Service Application.
  3. On the Search Service Application page, the top of the screen is already asking you Where should user’s searches go? Click on the location link.
  4. Enter the URL as https://search.cfcode2016.com. Click OK.

Note: At this point I uploaded a document to my intranet.cfcode2016.com site.

Search Content Sources

Here we are going to configure the Content Sources so that it searches and brings back the correct content.

  1. Open SharePoint 2016 Central Administration.
  2. Open Application Management > Manage Service application > Search Service Application
  3. In the Quick Launch menu on the left, under Crawling click Content Sources
  4. Click on Local SharePoint Sites.
  5. In the Start Address remove everything apart from the following :
    1. https://hnsc.cfcode2016.com
    2. https://hnsc.cfcode2016.com:11111
  6. Under Crawl Schedules we are going to set it up to run full crawl once a week and incremental once day. You may configure this differently or not at all for you environment. It really depends how much you need search to be up to date. It is quite an intensive resource process, and we are running everything on one box. Under Incremental Crawl,
    click on Create Schedule
  7. Set the Type as Daily. Accept the defaults and click OK.
  8. Under Full Crawl, click on Edit schedule. Set the Type as Weekly. Accept the defaults and click OK.
  9. Click OK
  10. Back on the Manage Content Source page, click New Content Source in the menu and fill out the following:
    1. Name: People
    2. Content Source Type: SharePoint Sites
    3. Start Addresses: https://my.cfcode2016.com
      sps3s://my.cfcode2016.com
    4. Crawl Settings: Crawl everything under the hostname for each start address
    5. Crawl Schedule: (Same as Local SharePoint Sites, use the dropdown)

Setting the Super User and Super Reader account

  1. Back in SharePoint 2016 Central Administration, select Application Management > Manage Web Applications.
  2. Select SharePoint HNSC Web Application and then click User Policy from the ribbon.
  3. On the Policy for Web Application dialog, click the Add Users on the menu.
  4. Accept (All Zones) then click Next.
  5. Add the user cfcode2016\SP_SuperUser and tick Full Control. Click Finish
  6. Repeat steps 3-5 for cfcode2016\SP_SuperReader and give Full Read rights.
  7. Click OK and close Policy for Web Application.

Kick off a full crawl

  1. Head back to the Search Service Application Service (Application Management > Manage Service Applications > Search Service Application.
  2. On the quick launch menu area, look for Content Sources under Crawling and click it.
  3. On the Manage Content Source page, click Start all crawls. This will kick of search crawling on your server.
  4. After crawling had finished, I headed to https://search.cfcode2016.com and searched for my document I uploaded earlier called “typescript”

Issue with People Search.

If you go to your People Search and type * but find no results come back, and you have followed everything correctly, I would ask you to check one thing.

  1. In SharePoint 2016 Central Administration, go to Application Management > Manage Service Applications. Then highlight the SharePoint User Profile Service Application.
  2. Click Administrator from the ribbon. Ensure that SP_Search is in there and has the permission Retrieve People Data for Search Crawlers, and ensure that SP_Farm is in there with Full Control.
  3. After updating this, run another full crawl, then try People search again.

We are almost at the end of the blog series on building a SharePoint 2016 development machine. Two more posts to go. Setting up workflows and setting up Visual Studio. Shut down your machines, take a checkpoint.

 

SharePoint 2013 Search not bring back all my results

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As a developer sometimes you will be creating pages as demo content and use the helpful website Lorem Ipsum http://www.lipsum.com/ or Bacon Ipsum http://baconipsum.com/ or if you are into your pirates http://pirateipsum.me/ to help you generate your text.

Select the number of paragraphs you want, or the number of words, hit a button and then you get a clipboard full of text.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Fusce pellentesque quam eu metus hendrerit, vel venenatis augue tempus. Aliquam a libero et quam pellentesque venenatis ac sed odio. Morbi at velit ligula. Ut mattis nec lacus ut rhoncus. Fusce ac convallis mi. Pellentesque varius at purus et congue. Mauris commodo feugiat eros non bibendum. Maecenas scelerisque tortor eu purus sodales, ut lacinia ligula tempor.

Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Sed vulputate eget dui non accumsan. Donec non neque non ante vulputate fermentum. Quisque a magna at dolor adipiscing feugiat et sit amet mi. Morbi at consectetur est, eget auctor velit. Vestibulum rhoncus eros eu est elementum faucibus. Aenean tortor erat, aliquam hendrerit tincidunt nec, eleifend sit amet lorem. Nunc scelerisque ante commodo mauris facilisis, vel feugiat orci vehicula. Integer molestie tincidunt nisi, vitae ultricies sapien convallis ut. Quisque tincidunt, turpis in sagittis egestas, libero risus gravida turpis, id lacinia dolor ligula et diam. Suspendisse nec aliquam neque, rutrum hendrerit augue. Aenean id ipsum venenatis, iaculis ipsum et, volutpat tortor.

So I’ve created 10 different publishing pages (all with different page names, and different images in the publishing Image) and filled them all with 5 paragraphs each of Lorem Ipsum, and set off a full index crawl of the content. Using the Content Search Query webpart, the preview (with the right query) brings back all 10 pages. However once I have saved the query in the webpart, it only returns 1 result. The same with SharePoint Search, I know all my pages are based on the same content type, so in the search box I type ContentType:”Cann0nF0dder Page” but yet only one result comes back. However putting the name of the page in the search the individual pages do come back, so they are within the search index.

So what is happening? SharePoint is getting too clever for its own good. It’s seeing that the content on the pages are the same, and assuming they are duplicates. Therefore the search doesn’t show multiple results. With the Content Search Webpart, you can export the webpart, change the “ShowViewDuplicates” property, then re-import it.

I’d recommend that when you are using Lorem Ipsum, paste different paragraphs in your pages.

Search CAML query with Managed Metadata

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In this final blog of this series, I will show you how to perform a CAML Query against a list for Managed Metadata Column. Now I’ve realized over the past week while I’ve been writing these blogs, that you might assume that I’d be using the Search Engine to obtain my results. Actually I’m performing a SPQuery on a SPList. (Perhaps I will create an additional post later how to actually “Search” via code.

The trick with performing a CAML query again a list for Managed Metadata is using <In> and listing every wssIds for the main term, and all its children. Normally when you perform a CAML query you would enter something similar to the following

<Where><Eq><FieldRef Name="Title"/><Value>File</Value></Eq></Where>

If you performed the above on a Managed Metadata column it would only bring back the one value, not the children.

If you remember from my last blog, the Managed Metadata column was called Location. It was Term Set based on Continents and the Countries within them. So to perform a query of Europe and all its child terms, you would first need to get the ID of the Term “Europe” then get all the children ID terms (e.g, Albania, Andorra, Anguilla etc).

Once we have the ID’s you then perform a CAML query similar to below.

<Where><In><FieldRef Name="Location" LookupId="TRUE"><Values><Value Type="Integer">13</Value><Value Type="Integer">3</Value><Value Type="Integer">9</Value></Values></In></Where>

Basic WebPart with Taxonomy Picker performing a CAML Query.

I’m going to walk through the steps that will allow you to obtain the Metadata Term, and then obtain all the children, before performing a query on a list. My list is called managed Metadata Demo, and I have a Managed Metadata Column on the list called Location.

  • Create an Empty SharePoint project. Make it a Farm Solution, and point to your SharePoint site with your document library containing your Managed Metadata column.
  • Add the following References Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.
  • Right click the project and select Add >New Item
  • From the Add New Item dialog, select Web Part. (Not Visual Web Part)
    I called my Web Part WPFilter.
  • Add the Using statement using Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy; to the top of the c# class WPFilter.
  • Add the following private variables.
    //Control for user to pick a Location
 private TaxonomyWebTaggingControl termPicker;
 //Button to search.
 private Button findButton;
 //Label Control for results
 private System.Web.UI.WebControls.Label result;
 //Taxonomy Field for Location
 private TaxonomyField location;
 //Data Grid to display Data
 private DataGrid dataGrid;
    • Add your CreateChildControls() method.
      
protected override void CreateChildControls()
 {
 try
 {
 //Obtain location Field as it is list.
 location = SPContext.Current.Web.Lists.TryGetList("Managed Metadata Demo").Fields["Location"] as TaxonomyField;
 //If was site Column.
 //location = SPContext.Current.Site.RootWeb.Fields["Location"] as TaxonomyField;
 //If location found.
 if (location != null)
 {
 //Create Picker.
 termPicker = new TaxonomyWebTaggingControl();
 //Grab SspID
 termPicker.SspId.Add(location.SspId);
 //Grab TermSetId
 termPicker.TermSetId.Add(location.TermSetId);
 termPicker.AllowFillIn = false;
 termPicker.IsMulti = false;
 //Set Width.
 termPicker.Width = 200;
 //Add Control
 this.Controls.Add(termPicker);
 this.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<br/>"));
 //Add Button.
 findButton = new Button();
 findButton.Text = "Search";
 findButton.Click += new EventHandler(findButton_Click);
 this.Controls.Add(findButton);
 //Add results label
 this.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<br/>"));
 result = new System.Web.UI.WebControls.Label();
 this.Controls.Add(result);
 this.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<br/>"));
 //Add DataGrid.
 dataGrid = new DataGrid();
 this.Controls.Add(dataGrid);
 }
 else
 {
 //Throw Error message
 Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("Unable to find field Location."));
 }
 }
 catch (Exception ex)
 {
 //Throw Error message
 Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("There was an error. " + ex.ToString()));
 }
 }
      • Now the method for findButton_Click
      void findButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            result.Text = "";
            //This returns as Name|GUID;
            string selectedTermValue = termPicker.Text;
            int seperatorIndex = selectedTermValue.IndexOf("|");
            if (selectedTermValue != string.Empty && seperatorIndex != -1)
            {
                //Get the TermID.
                Guid termId = new Guid(selectedTermValue.Substring(seperatorIndex + 1));
                //Get a TaxonomySession.
                TaxonomySession session = new TaxonomySession(SPContext.Current.Site);
                if (session.DefaultKeywordsTermStore != null)
                {
                    //get the default metadata service application
                    /*Function GetWssIdsOfTerm
                     * Site - The SPSite object that cotains the taxonomy hidden list.
                     * termStoreId - A Guid object that uniquely identifies the TermStore object
                     * termSetId - A Guid object that uniquely identifies the TermSet Object
                     * termId - A Guid object that uniquely identifies the Term
                     * includeDecendants - A boolean value that must be set to true if you would like the list of
                     *                     item Ids of descendant Term Obejct to also be included in the results.
                     * limit - The maximum number of list items IDs to return.
                     *
                     */
                    int[] wssIds = TaxonomyField.GetWssIdsOfTerm(SPContext.Current.Site, session.DefaultKeywordsTermStore.Id, location.TermSetId, termId, true, 100);
                    if (wssIds.Length > 0)
                    {
                        //Pass to SPQuery and display results.
                        FillDataGrid(wssIds);
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        //No results
                        result.Text += "\n Sorry. No results could be found.";
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    //Unable to find default keyword.
                    throw new Exception(string.Format("DefaultKeyWordTermStore not found in this site {0]", SPContext.Current.Site.Url));
                }
            }
        }

<ul>
	<li>
<div>Finally add the code to grab the CAML query, perform it, and add the results to the data grid.</div>


private void FillDataGrid(int[] wssIds)
 {
 //using System.Text;
 StringBuilder values = new StringBuilder();
 //Loop through ID's and create CAML QUERY loop.
 for (int i = 0; i < wssIds.Length; i++)
 {
 values.Append("<Value Type=\"Integer\">");
 values.Append(wssIds[i].ToString());
 values.Append("</Value>");
 }
 //Complete the CAML Query String.
 string strQuery = String.Format("<Where><In><FieldRef Name=\"Location\" LookupId=\"TRUE\"/><Values>{0}</Values></In></Where>", values.ToString());
 //Get List
 SPList list = SPContext.Current.Web.Lists.TryGetList("Managed Metadata Demo");
 if (list != null)
 {
 SPQuery query = new SPQuery();
 query.Query = strQuery;
 //View Fields
 query.ViewFields = "<FieldRef Name='FileLeafRef' /><FieldRef Name='Title'/><FieldRef Name='Location'/>";
 SPListItemCollection items = list.GetItems(query);
 //Results of Query to show User Query made.
 result.Text = System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(strQuery);
 if (items.Count < 1)
 result.Text += "\n Sorry. No results could be found.";
 //Add to grid and bind.
 dataGrid.DataSource = items.GetDataTable();
 dataGrid.DataBind();
 }
 else
 {
 result.Text = "Sorry. Unable to find the list Managed Metadata Demo";
 }
 }
[/soucecode]
</li>
	<li>
<div>Now run your code. Add your web part to a page. It should look similar to below.</div>
<img alt="" src="https://cann0nf0dder.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/041013_2046_searchcamlq3.png" /></li>
	<li>
<div>If I enter Europe, or use the label picker to find Europe and click Search, I will get a result set of all documents tagged with Europe or within the Term children. Also note the query actually being called in the result label.</div>

<Where><In><FieldRef Name="Location" LookupId="TRUE"/>
 <Values>
 <Value Type="Integer">13</Value>
 <Value Type="Integer">1</Value>
 <Value Type="Integer">2</Value>
 <Value Type="Integer">3</Value>
 <Value Type="Integer">8</Value>
 </Values>
 </In>
</Where>

      • As you can see from the results above, it has returned United Kingdom, Switzerland, Turkey and Europe documents. Hopefully you would you a ListViewByQuery webpart or display your data a little better than this.

      This concludes my Managed Metadata Series. Hope you have learnt something new. I’m hoping to write a bonus post on this series that will actually perform a Search query on Managed Metadata.

Search Refiners with Managed Metadata

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If we open up our Search Centre and query on some data, down the left hand side of the search results is a search refinement panel. This panel gives a breakdown of some metadata found within the search results which allows you to filter it further. If you look at the image below, the default search refiners are Result Type, Site, Author, Modified Date,
and Location. Now location is actually our managed metadata column. However this isn’t a custom one I’ve made, this is created by default by SharePoint. If I had something else in search that was more popular in the results that would have been there instead. So there is no guarantee that will be there for each search.

To get the search to work, you first need to ensure you have put data in a list with the columns you wish to search on, and perform a crawl in Central Administration for any results to show up in search. There are two different types of Search Refiners you can create ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator, or a TaxonomyFilterGenerator.

A ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator can be used with a Managed Metadata Column, however it displays the results as exact matches. What do I mean by that? Well if you remember in my previous blog I had a Term Set called Countries. Inside countries I had a list of Continents, and then countries underneath the Continents.

With a ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator if I selected Europe as my filter, it will only display items that have been tagged with Europe. However, what we are really asking for it any item that is in Europe. Using a TaxonomyFilterGenerator by filtering on Europe we will receive all items tagged with Europe, but also other item that are tagged with countries within Europe, such as United Kingdom, Andorra etc.

Setup for ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator refiner

This wasn’t going to be part of the blog, but as there is a different setup to get your ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator working to the TaxonomyFilterGenerator, I thought I would show you.

  • Create your site column, it can be any type of column, but for simplicity use a Choice column. Add some choice values.
  • Create a List, and add your choice column to it.
  • Then add items to your list. My example is below.

  • Now open up Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Service Applications > Search Service Application then click on Content Sources

  • On the Manage Content Sources page, click on the right of Local SharePoint Site and select Start Full Crawl

  • Once the crawl has completed in the Left Navigation Menu, under Queries and Results click Metadata Properties.
  • On the Metadata Property Mappings page click New Managed Property
  • Fill in the Property Name: DemoChoice
  • Under the Mappings to crawled properties click the button Add Mapping
  • In the dialog box, under Crawled property name type DemoSearchChoice. Click Find. Select the crawled property ows_DemoSearchChoice(Text) and click OK.

  • Save the Metadata Property Page.
  • Now that you have set up the Metadata Property, you need to perform a full crawl again. Follow the steps from earlier to do this.
  • Once the full crawl had completed, the way to check if it will work in a search it to navigate to your search center.
  • Type in <Name Of Property>:<Value> so for instance my example would be DemoChoice:Red and only the items tagged with Red will appear in my result set.

Set up for TaxonomyFilterGenerator refiner

For the TaxonomyFilterGenerator you don’t actually need to do anything apart from add some data to the list with the column and perform a full search. All managed Metadata columns are added to search Managed properties automatically. Unfortunately I can’t show you in a test, as it’s not quite the same as the Managed Property Generator.

Creating the refiner

  • Navigate to your search center results page. Easiest way is to perform a search. Once there edit the page.
  • Find the Refinement Panel on the left of the page, and edit the webpart.
  • Under the Refinement section there is the Filter Category Defintion, and the Use Default Configuration. The Filter Category Definition is what you will be adding your custom refiner to. However if you do not untick Use Default Configuration it doesn’t matter what you change the Filter Category Definition to, it won’t pick up the change.

If you take a copy of the Filter Category Definition you will be able to see what we are dealing with. It does look quite scary, but all it is, is a collection of <Category> and we just have to create one for our Taxonomy. Details can be found on the Microsoft Site on what can be included in a Category section.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ee819920(v=office.14).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ff625183(v=office.14).aspx

Creating a ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator refiner

First before we get round to doing one for our managed metadata property, we are going to create one for our Choice field we created at the start of this blog. Called DemoChoice.

With notepad or Visual studio copy the following.

<Category Title="CF Demo Choices"
Description="Managed Metadata for Blog Demo"
Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator"
MetadataThreshold="1"
NumberOfFiltersToDisplay="4"
MaxNumberOfFilters="20"
SortBy="Frequency"
SortByForMoreFilters="Name"
SortDirection="Descending"
SortDirectionForMoreFilters="Ascending"
ShowMoreLink="True"
MappedProperty="DemoChoice"
MoreLinkText="show more"
ShowCounts="Count"
LessLinkText="show fewer" />

Let me explain a few things. The Title can be anything you like. MetadataThreshold specifies the number of results that must contain a value to display in the filter generator. I have set this to 1 to ensure that if there is a result, then the refiner will show something. You might want to set this higher in a production environment. The MappedProperty is the value you created during the steps of “Setup for ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator refiner”.

  • Assuming you still have the Results page in edit mode, and are editing the Refinement Panel Web Part, take a copy of the above, and insert it after <FilterCategories> and before <Category Title=”Result Type” of the Filter Category Definition.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<FilterCategories>
<!--Insert Here-->
<Category Title="Result Type"
  • Click OK to the WebPart Editor, Save and Close the page from the ribbon.
  • In the search, (if you have been following my demo) type item in the search box. In the Search refinement section you will see your ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator at work.

  • If you click on any of the links, say Orange the results will re-filter to show you just Items that are tagged with Orange. You might have noticed the number of items next to the value, this is there because I added the XML ShowCounts=”Count”, I could have added Percentage instead.

Creating a TaxonomyFilterGenerator refiner

With notepad or Visual studio copy the following

<Category Title="Location"
Description="Taxonomy Managed Metadata for Blog Demo"
Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.TaxonomyFilterGenerator"
MetadataThreshold="1"
NumberOfFiltersToDisplay="4"
MaxNumberOfFilters="20"
SortBy="Frequency"
SortByForMoreFilters="Name"
SortDirection="Descending"
SortDirectionForMoreFilters="Ascending"
ShowMoreLink="True"
MappedProperty="ows_MetadataFacetInfo"
MoreLinkText="show more"
LessLinkText="show fewer" />

The difference here is that the Type always points to TaxonomyFilterGenerator.
The MappedProperty always points to ows_MetadataFacetInfo, and the Title points to the name of the Column or Field that the Managed Metadata is mapped to. So in our case Location, (If the field has a space that’s OK but remember it’s the column name.) If you used “Managed Metadata Columns” for your title then it would display all managed metadata columns, not one particular refiner.

  • Assuming you still have the Results page in edit mode, and are editing the Refinement Panel Web Part, take a copy of the above, and insert it after <FilterCategories> and before <Category Title=”CF Demo Choices” of the Filter Category Definition.
  • Click OK to the WebPart Editor, Save and Close the page from the ribbon.
  • In the search, (if you have been following my demo) type item in the search box. In the Search refinement section you will see your TaxonomyFilterGenerator at work.

Above is the picture of my library with the Location data. Below is a Search on “File” which happens to be the title of each document. All 15 items.

Now if I select show more, and then click on Europe. It will show me 5 documents. The one I’ve actually tagged as Europe, and the 4 others that have been tagged to countries that are children of Europe in our Term Set.

In my last blog of this series, I will show you how to perform a CAML query against a Managed Metadata column so that the results will return all child terms as well. Just like we have with the Search Refiner.

Debugging Display Templates

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Display Template Series

Last in my series of Display Templates, I’m going to show you how to debug the JavaScript within a Display Template.

There is more than one way to skin a cat, so the saying goes, and this way I’m showing below isn’t the only way.

  1. Once your Display Template is uploaded to your Master Page Gallery, and you have assigned it to your Content Search WebPart, load the page in the browser and then hit F12 to load up the IE developer toolbar. (Obviously you can use Firebug in Firefox if that’s your preferred choice of browser).
  2. Switch the tab to Script. In the drop down list of scripts currently running on your page, find the corresponding .js file to your Display Template.
  3. After selecting it, insert your breakpoint where you wish, and then click the Start debugging link at the menu bar area.
  4. The page will refresh, and when your JavaScript breakpoint is reached, you can then step through the code, and add Watch where needed.

Display Templates and the ManagedPropertyMapping Custom Element.

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Display Template Series

Following on from my previous blog Content Search WebPart and Display Templates, I wish to take this further and show how to obtain the properties returned in the search.

In the Header properties of a Display Template, there is a Custom Element called ManagedPropertyMapping. This element Maps fields exposed by search result items into properties available for JavaScript. Used only in item templates.

According to Microsoft the property is comma-delimited list of values that use the following format:

‘property display name'{property name}:’managed property’
example: ‘Known As'{knownas}:’PreferredName’

However while testing to ensure this blog is correct, I’m finding that the property display name and property name is actually the other way round. The examples Microsoft uses always has the property display name and the property name the same. The below picture is setting the ManagedPropertyMapping to the example above.

The below picture is if I swap the property display name and property name around. ( ‘property name'{property display name}:’managed property’ )
example: ‘knownas'{Known As}:’PreferredName’

As you can see from the above pictures, I believe property name and property display name are the opposite way round to what Microsoft have stated.

Property display name
is the property name that shows in the Web Part editing pane when the display template is selected.

Property name is the identifier, in script when obtaining the value of the managed property use would use the property name to call it.

Managed property is a string of one or more managed properties, separated by semicolons. Only in the display template you can map multiple managed properties, when you override using the WebPart edit pane, you can only select one managed property. When multiple properties are selected, they are read in order, and the first value that matches the name of a managed property of the current search item will have its value mapped.

Once a property has been mapped, you can then call it within the JavaScript of the DIV tag section. To obtain a value you would call $getItemValue() passing in current context and the property name. (‘property Name‘{property display name}:’managed property’)

var knownAsValue = $getItemValue(ctx, "knownas");

To use the above variable within the HTML

<div class="cbs-KnownAs ms-nowrap">_#= knownAsValue =#_</div>


Content Search WebPart and Display Templates

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Display Template Series

In my previous post Brief Introduction into Display Templates I gave an overview of what a Display Template is. In this post I hope to delve a little deeper and show how they are used with Content Search WebParts.

When you add a Content Search WebPart or a Search Result WebPart when you configure the Web Part, you have to select a control and an item display template.

A Control Template is used to show how the results are presented, an HTML structure of the overall layout. The surrounding area that will contain all items returned. For example it could be the heading and footer. The control template is only rendered once within the WebPart.

An Item Template provides the HTML display for an item in the search results. This template will be called for each item in the result set. This allows you to define the layout of the item.

So when the WebPart uses them together it creates a rendered piece of HTML for the webpart.

A display template structure is made up of four main sections. Title, Header properties, Script Block and a DIV block.

Title

Very simply this is the display name that is found in the Display Template sections of the WebPart edit pane.

 <title> My Display Name </title>

Header Properties

Following on from the title tag, there is a set of custom elements which provide information about the display template to SharePoint. These elements are surrounded by the following XML markup:

<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<mso:CustomDocumentProperties>
…
</mso:CustomDocumentProperties>
</xml><![endif]-->

An example of an element would be;

<mso:TemplateHidden msdt:dt="string">0</mso:TemplateHidden>
<mso:MasterPageDescription msdt:dt="string">Displays a result tailored for a picture.</mso:MasterPageDescription>

The different properties and descriptions are described here (Taken directly from the Microsoft Website):

Property Description
TemplateHidden Boolean value that indicates whether to hide the display template from the list of available templates in the Web Part. This value can be changed in the display template file properties.
ManagedPropertyMapping Maps fields exposed by search result items into properties available for JavaScript. Used only in item templates.
MasterpageDescription Provides a friendly description of the display template. This is shown to users in the SharePoint editing environment. This value can be changed in the display template file properties.
ContentTypeId The ID of the content type associated with the display template
TargetControlType Indicates the context in which the display template is used. This value can be changed in the display template file properties.
HtmlDesignAssociated Boolean value that indicates whether a display template HTML file has a .js file associated with it.
HtmlDesignConversionSucceeded Indicates whether the conversion process was successful. This value is automatically added to the file by SharePoint, and is used only in custom display templates.
HtmlDesignStatusAndPreview Contains the URL to the HTML file and the text for the Status column (either Conversion successful or Warnings and Errors). This value is automatically added to the file by SharePoint, and is used only in custom display templates.

Script block

The script block is an area where you can add links to include internal, external JavaScript of CSS. You can use SharePoint tokens such as ~sitecollection to obtain URLs. An example shown below:

<script>
   $includeScript(this.url, <a href="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js">http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js</a>);
   $includeCSS(this.url, "style library/Slider/css/MySearchWebPartStyle.css");
 </script>

DIV block

The final part is a DIV block with an ID that matches the name of the HTML file. All HTML and code that you want the display template to use must be written within this DIV tag. Please note that this DIV tag is not rendered on the webpage at runtime. As I stated in previous blog, JavaScript code sits within comment blocks that start with <!–#_ and ends with _#–>. HTML sits outside these blocks. You can also uses these blocks control the HTML with conditional statements. Inside HTML attributes that are making script calls or using JavaScript variables need to start with _#= and end with =#_ comment blocks.

Example below taken from the Control_List.html file.

<div id="Control_List">
 <!--#_
 if (!$isNull(ctx.ClientControl) &&
 !$isNull(ctx.ClientControl.shouldRenderControl) &&
 !ctx.ClientControl.shouldRenderControl())
 {
 return "";
 }
 ctx.ListDataJSONGroupsKey = "ResultTables";
 var $noResults = Srch.ContentBySearch.getControlTemplateEncodedNoResultsMessage(ctx.ClientControl);

var noResultsClassName = "ms-srch-result-noResults";

var ListRenderRenderWrapper = function(itemRenderResult, inCtx, tpl)
 {
 var iStr = [];
 iStr.push('<li>');
 iStr.push(itemRenderResult);
 iStr.push('</li>');
 return iStr.join('');
 }

ctx['ItemRenderWrapper'] = ListRenderRenderWrapper;
 _#-->
 <ul class="cbs-List">
 _#= ctx.RenderGroups(ctx) =#_
 </ul>
 <!--#_
 if (ctx.ClientControl.get_shouldShowNoResultMessage())
 {
 _#-->
 <div class="_#= noResultsClassName =#_">_#= $noResults =#_</div>
 <!--#_
 }

_#-->
 </div>

You can use jQuery within your display templates, you must include the jQuery library in your Script Block. Also because jQuery is used to using the # symbol, which is also required in the templates, to reference an ID Selector using jquery it is recommend to use the following code;

var containerQueryId = ‘#’ + ‘_#= containerId =#_’;
$(‘_#= containerQueryId =#_’);

Display Template for Content Search WebPart.

When creating a Display Template it is recommend to copy an existing HTML display template that is similar to the one you wish to create. Once you have copied it and renamed, and reconfigured it, and saved it back to the Master Page Gallery, you will find a corresponding .js file automatically created for you.

By browsing to your publishing site, in the upper right corner of the page, choose Settings, and then choose Design Manager.

In Design Manager, in the left panel area, choose Edit Display Templtes. Your HTML file will now appear with a Status column that will either show “Warnings and Errors” or “Conversion successful”. Please note that Approval Status is set to “Draft” and you need to publish any files added to the Master Page Gallery from within the Master Page Gallery. Once you have converted the template successfully, but going to your web page with eth Content Search Web Part on, when editing you will now see your new template in the corresponding Display Template Control or item.

Brief Introduction into Display Templates

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Display Template Series

In SharePoint 2013, for search result Web Part you have the ability to customise your search results. Yes in 2010 you could customise the content query Web Part and search results, but you had to use XSLT to do this. Something I never got round to learning.

In 2013 you have the feature of display templates. Display templates are the combination of html and generated JavaScript which enable the customisation of search results. Used in Search WebParts, Display templates control which managed properties are shown in the search results, and how they appear in the Web Part. You can find the display templates on the site by navigating to;

Site Settings > Master Page Gallery > Display Templates

The Search folder is where the files relevant for the Search Results Web Part are kept. The Content Web Parts folder is where the files relevant for the Content Search Web part are kept.  Now this is the gotcha that made me spend half my morning getting nowhere. If you only see just the .js files within any folder underneath Display Templates, it means you do not have the site collection feature “SharePoint server Publishing Infrastructure” activated. Once this feature is activated, you will see all HTML and corresponding .js files.

Create your own Display Template

I was going to write a step by step guide on how to create your own Display Template, but I believe a simple example by Erik Swenson is a good walkthrough video. http://erikswenson.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/sharepoint-2013-display-templates.html All I can advise is;

  • Only ever modify the .HTML files. When you upload the html file back into the Display Template folder it will automatically produce the .js file for you.
  • Any JavaScript written within the HTML files needs to be surrounded by <!–#_ javascriptcode _#–> and any reference to JavaScript within HTML attributes needs to be surrounded by _#javascriptcode#_

Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj945138.aspx