Implementation of Customizable Instant Search on Susper using Local Storage

Results on Susper could be instantly displayed as user types in a query. This was a strict feature till some time before, where the user doesn’t have customizable option to choose. But now one could turn off and on this feature.

To turn on and off this feature visit ‘Search Settings’ on Susper. This will be the link to it: http://susper.com/preferences and you will find different options to choose from.

How did we implement this feature?

Searchsettings.component.html:

<div>
 <h4><strong>Susper Instant Predictions</strong></h4>
 <p>When should we show you results as you type?</p>
 <input name="options" [(ngModel)]="instantresults" disabled value="#" type="radio" id="op1"><label for="op1">Only when my computer is fast enough</label><br>
 <input name="options" [(ngModel)]="instantresults" [value]="true" type="radio" id="op2"><label for="op2">Always show instant results</label><br>
 <input name="options" [(ngModel)]="instantresults" [value]="false" type="radio" id="op3"><label for="op3">Never show instant results</label><br>
</div>

User is displayed with options to choose from regarding instant search.when the user selects a new option, his selection is stored in the instantresults variable in search settings component using ngModel.

Searchsettings.component.ts:

Later when user clicks on save button the instantresults object is stored into localStorage of the browser

onSave() {
 if (this.instantresults) {
   localStorage.setItem('instantsearch', JSON.stringify({value: true}));
 } else {
   localStorage.setItem('instantsearch', JSON.stringify({ value: false }));
   localStorage.setItem('resultscount', JSON.stringify({ value: this.resultCount }));
 }
 this.router.navigate(['/']);
}

 

Later this value is retrieved from the localStorage function whenever a user enters a query in search bar component and search is made according to user’s preference.

Searchbar.component.ts

Later this value is retrieved from the localStorage function whenever a user enters a query in search bar component and search is made according to user’s preference.

onquery(event: any) {
 this.store.dispatch(new query.QueryAction(event));
 let instantsearch = JSON.parse(localStorage.getItem('instantsearch'));

 if (instantsearch && instantsearch.value) {
   this.store.dispatch(new queryactions.QueryServerAction({'query': event, start: this.searchdata.start, rows: this.searchdata.rows}));
   this.displayStatus = 'showbox';
   this.hidebox(event);
 } else {
   if (event.which === 13) {
     this.store.dispatch(new queryactions.QueryServerAction({'query': event, start: this.searchdata.start, rows: this.searchdata.rows}));
     this.displayStatus = 'showbox';
     this.hidebox(event);
   }
 }
}

 

Interaction of different components here:

  1. First we set the instantresults object in Local Storage from search settings component.
  2. Later this value is retrieved and used by search bar component using localstorage.get() method to decide whether to display results instantly or not.

Below, Gif shows how you could use this feature in Susper to customise the instant results in your browser.

References:

 

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Using Hidden Attribute for Angular in Susper

In Angular, we can use the hidden attribute, to hide and show different components of the page. This blog explains what the hidden attribute is, how it works and how to use it for some common tasks.
In Susper, we used the [hidden] attribute for two kinds of tasks.

  1. To hide components of the page until all the search results load.
  2. To hide components of the page, if they were meant to appear only in particular cases (say only the first page of the search results etc).

Let us now see how we apply this in a html file.
Use the [hidden] attribute for the component, to specify a flag variable responsible for hiding it.
When this variable is set to true or 1, the component is hidden otherwise it is shown.
Here is an example of how the [hidden] attribute is used:

<app-infobox [hidden]=”hidefooter class=“infobox col-md-4” *ngIf=“Display(‘all’)”></app-infobox>

Note that [hidden] in a way simply sets the css of the component as { display: none }, whereas in *ngIf, the component is not loaded in the DOM.
So, in this case unless Display(‘all’) returns true the component is not even loaded to the DOM but if [hidden] is set to true, then the component is still present, only not displayed.
In the typescript files, here is how the two tasks are performed:
To hide components of the page, until all the search results load.

this.querychange$ = store.select(fromRoot.getquery);
this.querychange$.subscribe(res => {
this.hidefooter = 1;

this.responseTime$ = store.select(fromRoot.getResponseTime);
this.responseTime$.subscribe(responsetime => {
this.hidefooter = 0;

The component is hidden when the query request is just sent. It is then kept hidden until the results for the previously sent query are available.

2. To hide components of the page, if they were meant to appear only in particular cases.
For example, if you wish to show a component like Autocorrect only when you are on the first page of the search results, here is how you can do it:

if (this.presentPage === 1) {
this.hideAutoCorrect = 0;
} else {
this.hideAutoCorrect = 1;
}

This should hopefully give you a good idea on how to use the hidden attribute. These resources can be referred to for more information.

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Crawl Job Feature For Susper To Index Websites

The Yacy backend provides search results for Susper using a web crawler (or) spider to crawl and index data from the internet. They also require some minimum input from the user.

As stated by Michael Christen (@Orbiter) “a web index is created by loading a lot of web pages first, then parsing the content and placing the result into a search index. The question is: how to get a large list of URLs? This is solved by a crawler: we start with a single web page, extract all links, then load these links and go on. The root of such a process is the ‘Crawl Start’.”

Yacy has a web crawler module that can be accessed from here: http://yacy.searchlab.eu/CrawlStartExpert.html. As we would like to have a fully supported front end for Yacy, we also introduced a crawler in Susper. Using crawler one could tell Yacy what process to do and how to crawl a URL to index search results on Yacy server. To support the indexing of web pages with the help of Yacy server, we had implemented a ‘Crawl Job’ feature in Susper.

1)Visit http://susper.com/crawlstartexpert and give information regarding the sites you want Susper to crawl.Currently, the crawler accepts an input of URLs or a file containing URLs. You could customise crawling process by tweaking crawl parameters like crawling depth, maximum pages per domain, filters, excluding media etc.

2) Once crawl parameters are set, click on ‘Start New Crawl Job’ to start the crawling process.

3) It will raise a basic authentication pop-up. After filling, the user will receive a success alert and will be redirected back to home page.

The process of crawl job on Yacy server will get started according to crawling parameters.

Implementation of Crawler on Susper:

We have created a separate component and service in Susper for Crawler

Source code can be found at:

When the user initiates the crawl job by pressing the start button, it calls startCrawlJob() function from the component and this indeed calls the CrawlStart service.We send crawlvalues to the service and subscribe, to the return object confirming whether the crawl job has started or not.

crawlstart.component.ts:-

startCrawlJob() {
 this.crawlstartservice.startCrawlJob(this.crawlvalues).subscribe(res => {
   alert('Started Crawl Job');
   this.router.navigate(['/']);
 }, (err) => {
   if (err === 'Unauthorized') {
     alert("Authentication Error");
   }
 });
};

 

After calling startCrawlJob() function from the service file, the service file creates a URLSearchParams object to create parameters for each key in input and send it to Yacy server through JSONP request.

crawlstart.service.ts

startCrawlJob(crawlvalues) {
 let params = new URLSearchParams();
 for (let key in crawlvalues) {
   if (crawlvalues.hasOwnProperty(key)) {
     params.set(key, crawlvalues[key]);
   }

 }
 params.set('callback', 'JSONP_CALLBACK');


 let options = new RequestOptions({ search: params });
 return this.jsonp
   .get('http://yacy.searchlab.eu/Crawler_p.json', options).map(res => {
     res.json();
   });

}

Resources:

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Using @Output EventEmitter to Hide Search Suggestions in Angular for Susper Web App

Problem: In Susper the suggestions box doesn’t hide when there are no suggestions. To fix this, we have used @Output to create interaction between the search bar and suggestions box.

Susper gives suggestions to the user when user types a query. These suggestions are retrieved from the suggest.json endpoint from Yacy server.

We have a separate component for searching a query and a separate component for showing suggestions (auto-complete.component.ts). The architectural link between the query box, suggestion box and the results page is a bit complicated.

The search bar and the auto-complete component doesn’t interact directly. Whenever a new query is entered, the search bar triggers an action with a payload including the query. On receiving the new query, auto-complete component calls Yacy server to get suggestions from the endpoint and display them inside the suggestion box. Whenever a user searches making a new query, the search bar implementation opens the suggestion box even if there are no results. So there should be a way to inform search bar component that suggestions box has received empty results and search bar could hide the suggestions box.

To achieve this we used @Output to emit an event

@Output() hidecomponent: EventEmitter<any> = new EventEmitter<any>();

autocomplete.component.ts:-

this.autocompleteservice.getsearchresults(query).subscribe(res => {
 if (res) {
   if (res[0]) {
     this.results = res[1];
     if (this.results.length === 0) {
       this.hidecomponent.emit(1);
     } else {
       this.hidecomponent.emit(0);
     }
}

 

Then in search bar component, this is binded to a function hidesuggestions() which takes care of hiding the suggestion box.

searchbar.component.html

<app-auto-complete (hidecomponent)="hidesuggestions($event)" id="auto-box" [hidden]="!ShowAuto()"></app-auto-complete>

 

searchbar.component.ts

hidesuggestions(data: number) {
 if (data === 1) {
   this.displayStatus = 'hidebox';
 } else {
   this.displayStatus = 'showbox';
 }
}
ShowAuto() {
 return (this.displayStatus === 'showbox');
}

 

Here you could see that the auto-complete component’s hidden attribute in searchbar.component.ts is binded with ShowAuto() function which takes care about the interaction and hides the suggestions box whenever there are no results.

Below a GIF shows how this suggestions feature is working on Susper

Source code related to this implementation is available at this pull

References:

Continue ReadingUsing @Output EventEmitter to Hide Search Suggestions in Angular for Susper Web App

Multiple Page Rendering on a Single Query in Susper Angular Front-end

Problem: Susper used to render a new results page for each new character input. It should render a single page for the final query as reported in issue 371. For instance, the browser’s back button shows five pages for each of the five characters entered as a query.

Solution: This problem was arising due to code:

this.router.navigate(['/search'], {queryParams: this.searchdata});

Before we have this one line in search-bar component which gets called on each character entry

Fix:To fix this issue we required calling router.navigate only when we receive results and not on each character input.

So, we first removed the line which was cause of this issue from search-bar component and replaced it with

this.store.dispatch(new queryactions.QueryServerAction(query));

 

This triggers a QueryServer action, and make a request to Yacy end point for search results.

Now in app.component.ts , we get subscribed to resultscomponentchange$ which gets called only when new search results are received and hence we navigate to a new page after the resultscomponentchange subscription is called.

this.resultscomponentchange$ = store.select(fromRoot.getItems);
this.resultscomponentchange$.subscribe(res => {
 if (this.searchdata.query.length > 0) {
   this.router.navigate(['/search'], {queryParams: this.searchdata});
 }

});
this.wholequery$ = store.select(fromRoot.getwholequery);
this.wholequery$.subscribe(data => {
 this.searchdata = data;
});
if (localStorage.getItem('resultscount')) {
 this.store.dispatch(new queryactions.QueryServerAction({'query': '', start: 0, rows: 10, search: false}));
}

 

 

Finally, this problem got fixed and now there is only one page being rendered for a valid search. Source code for this implementation is available in this pull.

Resources:

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Using RouterLink in the Susper Angular Frontend to Speed up the Loading Time

In Susper, whenever the user clicks on some links, the whole application used to load again, thereby taking more time to load the page. But in Single Page Applications (SPAs) we don’t need to load the whole application. In Fact, SPAs are known to load internal pages faster than traditional HTML web pages. To achieve this we have to inform the application that a link will redirect the user to an internal page. So that the application doesn’t reload completely and reinitializes itself. In angular, this can be done by replacing href with routerLink for the tag.

Routerlink when used with tag syntactically as

<a routerLink="/contact" routerLinkActive="active">Contact</a>

doesn’t load the whole page instead it asks the server for only the contact component and renders it in place of <router-outlet></router-outlet>

This happens through an ajax call to the server asking for only contact component, thereby reducing the time it takes and doesn’t show a whole complete reload of the page.

Below time graph shows requests made when a tag with href was clicked.

If you observe it takes more than 3 seconds to load the page.

But when you use [routerLink] as an attribute for navigation, you find the page being displayed in just a blink.

What we have done in Susper?

In Susper, on issue #167, @mariobehling has noticed that there are some links which are loading slowly. On looking at the issue and a test run of the issue, I found that the problem is with the loading of the whole page, thereby immediately checked with the tag and found that a “href” attribute was used instead of “[routerLink]” angular attribute. I made a pull changing href to “[routerLink]” thereby speeding up Susper to around 3x faster than before.

https://github.com/fossasia/susper.com/pull/234/files

References

Continue ReadingUsing RouterLink in the Susper Angular Frontend to Speed up the Loading Time

Implementing a suggestion box in Susper Angular JS Front-end

In Susper, we have implemented a suggestion box for our input box. This was done using Yacy suggest API. This is how the box looks:

In this blog, let us see how to implement such a box using html, css, twitter-bootstrap and typescript. You can also check the code at the Susper repository.

The html code is simple and straightforward:

 

class=“suggestion-box” *ngIf=“results”>

</div>

A few points to notice :

  • *ngIf=”results” ensures that the box is displayed only when it has suggestions to display and not otherwise
  • The [routerLink] and [queryParams] attributes together link every result to the search page, with the correct query.

This is the css code :

a {
text-decoration: none;
}.suggestions {
font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 17px;
margin-left: 2.4%;
}.query-suggestions:hover {
background: #E3E3E3;
}.suggestion-box{
width: 635.2px;
max-width: 100%;
border: 1px solid rgba(150,150,150,0.3);
background-color: white;
margin-left: -25.7px;
position: absolute;
boxshadow: 0px 0.2px 0px;
}

A few points to notice again:

    • Box-shadow: This gives the drop up a shadow effect, which looks really nice, the first 3 parameters are for dimensions (X-offset, Y-offset, Blur). The rgba specifies color, with parameters as (red-component, green-component, blue-component, opacity).
    • Text-decoration: This attribute is used to add/remove decoration like underline for links.
    • Font-family: The font-family mentioned here is Arial, if Arial is unavailable sans-serif is used.

In the typescript file, there are two major tasks:

  1. Splice the results if greater than five. A neat suggestion-box should have a maximum of five results, hence we splice the results:

this.results.concat(res[0]);
if ( this.results.length > 5) {
this.results = this.results.splice (0, 5);
  1. Hide the suggestion-box if there are no suggestions from the API:
@Output() hidecomponent: EventEmitter<any> = new EventEmitter<any>();

this.query$.subscribe( query => {
if (query) {
this.autocompleteservice.getsearchresults(query).subscribe(res => {
if (res) {
this.results = res[1];
if (this.results.length === 0) {
this.hidecomponent.emit(1);
} else {
this.hidecomponent.emit(0);
}

If you want a more elaborate picture, you can view the entire html, css and typescript files of the auto-complete component.

This tutorial, http://4dev.tech/2016/03/tutorial-creating-an-angular2-autocomplete/ is very useful in case you want to implement auto complete suggestion feature from scratch.

In addition, this stack overflow thread has some interesting insights too: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35881815/implementing-autocomplete-for-angular2

Continue ReadingImplementing a suggestion box in Susper Angular JS Front-end

Implementing Themes in Angular JS for Susper

Adding themes to any website, makes it more interesting to use, and also helps customize the website according to personal preferences. This blog deals with how we implemented themes in Susper.
Susper offers the following themes

  • Default
  • Dark
  • Basic
  • Contrast
  • Terminal

This is how some of the themes look
Dark:

Contrast:  
Terminal:
Lets go through a step by step guide how to implement this:

  1. Add a Themes service  (In app/src/theme.service.ts in Susper)

Here is the code snippet:

import { Injectable } from ‘@angular/core’;

@Injectable()
export class ThemeService {

public titleColor: string;
public linkColor: string;
public descriptionColor: string;
public backgroundColor: string;

constructor() { }

}

  1.  Create a component for themes, and define functions for various themes in the .ts file.(src/app/theme/theme.component.ts in Susper)

Here is the example code:

import { Component, OnInit } from ‘@angular/core’;
import { ThemeService } from ‘../theme.service’;@Component({
selector: ‘app-theme’,
templateUrl: ‘./theme.component.html’,
styleUrls: [‘./theme.component.css’]
})
export class ThemeComponent implements OnInit {constructor(
private themeService: ThemeService
) { }ngOnInit() {
}darkTheme() {
this.themeService.backgroundColor = ‘#FFFFFF’;
this.themeService.titleColor = ‘#050404’;
this.themeService.linkColor = ‘#7E716E’;
this.themeService.descriptionColor = ‘#494443’;
}

defaultTheme() {
this.themeService.backgroundColor = ‘#FFFFFF’;
this.themeService.titleColor = ‘#1a0dab’;
this.themeService.linkColor = ‘#006621’;
this.themeService.descriptionColor = ‘#545454’;
}

basicTheme() {
this.themeService.backgroundColor = ‘#FFFFFF’;
this.themeService.titleColor = ‘#1a0dab’;
this.themeService.linkColor = ‘#494443’;
this.themeService.descriptionColor = ‘#7E716E’;
}

In the above code, the first few lines  include the constructor, which defines the theme service, and include a default function that runs as soon as the page is initialized.

We then see three kinds of themes implemented, dark, default and contrast. Let us examine the darkTheme:

darkTheme() {
this.themeService.backgroundColor = ‘#FFFFFF’;
this.themeService.titleColor = ‘#050404’;
this.themeService.linkColor = ‘#7E716E’;
this.themeService.descriptionColor = ‘#494443’;
}
  • The first line sets the background color of the screen(to white).
  • The second line is used to set the color of all the titles of the search results
  • The third line is used to set the link/url color
  • The fourth line sets the description color
    1.   Link the appropriate attributes in your html pages, using [style.’css-attribute’]

(src/app/results/results.component.html in Susper)

Following this example, you can link different parts of the html file to the attributes in your theme service and you are done!
If implementing this in a project like Susper, a few points of caution:

  • Make sure you write your spec.ts file well, and add your component for proper compilation and testing.
  • Do not forget to import the service into any component before you use it in its html files.

Resources 

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Implementing a Pagination Bar in Susper Angular JS Frontend

Searching on Susper most queries will have a number of search results. These results may span over several pages, and hence, a well designed pagination bar becomes essential for easy navigation. This blog deals with how we created the pagination bar in Susper. This is how the pagination bar in Susper looks:

There are a maximum of 10 pages displayed at any point of time.
At times you may have lesser results too:

where you can either directly click on a page or use the Previous and Next buttons for navigation. As you move along the pages, this is how it looks:

We will now see how we go about creating this bar.
The html source code( with a line by line explanation of the code):

<div class=“pagination-bar”>
<div class=“pagination-property” *ngIf=“noOfPages>1”>
<nav arialabel=“Page navigation” *ngIf=“(items$ | async)?.length!=0”>
  • Previous button is used to decrease the current page number, clicking on the first S in ‘Susper’ also accomplishes this task. Notice that this button is to be displayed only if you are not already on the first page of Susper.
<li class=“page-item” *ngFor=“let num of getNumber(maxPage)”><span class=“page-link” *ngIf=“presentPage>=4 && presentPage-3+num<=noOfPages” [class.active_page]=”getStyle(presentPage-3+num)”
(click)=”getPresentPage(presentPage-3+num)” href=“#”>

[class.active_page]=”getStyle(presentPage-3+num)” class=“page-text”>U

class=“page-number”>{{presentPage-3+num}}</span></span>
<span class=“page-link” *ngIf=“presentPage<4 && num<=noOfPages” [class.active_page]=”num+1 == presentPage (click)=”getPresentPage(num+1)”
href=“#”>

[class.active_page]=”num+1 == presentPage class=“page-text”>U</span>

class=“page-number”>{{num+1}}</span></span></li>

  • The above lines specify that we want to update our pagination bar only if the user has navigated more than the first three pages  
  • class.active_page gives correct css for the active page and getStyle() tells whether that particular page is active or not  
  • getPresentPage() uses the current page number to calculate which results to display  

<li class=“page-item”><span class=“page-link” (click)=”incPresentPage()”>

class=“page-text next”>SPER

</span></li>
<li class=“page-item2” *ngIf=“!getStyle(maxPage)”><span class=“spl” (click)=”incPresentPage()”>

class=“arrow”>>
class=“side-text”>Next

</span></li></ul>
</div>
</nav>
</div>

  • This part is used to increment the present page, and show the next/SPER message. Notice that it should be displayed only if you are not already on the last page

The attached typescript functions:

incPresentPage() {
this.presentPage = Math.min(this.noOfPages, this.presentPage + 1);
this.getPresentPage(this.presentPage);
}decPresentPage() {
this.presentPage = Math.max(1, this.presentPage 1);
this.getPresentPage(this.presentPage);
}
  • incPresentPage() increments the present page, if possible(that is you have not reached your maximum pages already).
  • decPresentPage() decrements the present page, if possible(that is you have not reached page 1 already).

getStyle(page) {
return ((this.presentPage) === page);
}
  • getStyle() returns true if passed page is the present page, useful to apply different css classes to the active page

getPresentPage(N) {
this.presentPage = N;
let urldata = Object.assign({}, this.searchdata);
urldata.start = (this.presentPage 1) * urldata.rows;
this.store.dispatch(new queryactions.QueryServerAction(urldata));}
  • getPresentPage () is used to change the page, and navigate to the page, with the correct rows of data

And you are done! You now have a working pagination bar to plugin at the bottom of your search results!

You can check out this elaborate tutorial on implementing Pagination bars from w3 schools : https://www.w3schools.com/css/css3_pagination.asp

Continue ReadingImplementing a Pagination Bar in Susper Angular JS Frontend

Making the footer-navigation bar stick to the bottom in Susper

In Susper, we have a navigation bar as a footer, as shown:

Previously this footer-navbar would appear immediately after the content, even if it was in the middle of the page. This is how the footer would appear:Since this could be a very common problem on a lot of websites, this blog deals with a simple hack for it.  

  1. Design your footer navbar as you please. You need not use any predefined bootstrap classes. You also need not specify any parameters regarding the position of the navbar (relative, absolute etc.).
  2. Enclose the rest of the data on your webpage in a div tag, do not forget to mention a class name or id name for the tag.  
  3. Now comes the simplest trick: Set a minimum height for your div! It is advisable to use vh (viewport-height) as your unit of measurement since it is easy to estimate how much of the viewport needs to be covered by your width.

This is how it is used in Susper:

Remember that each vh corresponds to one-hundredth of the viewport total height. So 100 vh here will mean a minimum height of the full viewport.

You can check the Susper repository for the source code or go through this link for alternate ways to create a sticky footer at the bottom.

Continue ReadingMaking the footer-navigation bar stick to the bottom in Susper