Thunderstone Search Appliance Manual

Invoking Query Autocomplete

Query Autocomplete can be used in your own custom front end using Javascript similar to that used by the normal search interface. If you want to invoke it arbitrarily, you can request URLs of the form:

http://HOSTNAME/texis/search/autocomplete.json? pr=profile&term=term

Where HOSTNAME is the IP/hostname of your Parametric Search Appliance, profile is the profile to search, and term is the user's partially typed term.

Autocomplete returns a JSON array in the OpenSearch format (http://www.opensearch.org/Specifications/OpenSearch/Extensions/Suggestions). Getting completions for term=sea would return something like:

["sea",["seattle","sears","search"]]

Autocomplete also supports JSON-P, so adding &callback=updateList to the URL would return:

updateList({term: "sea", completions: ["seattle","sears","search"]})

Alternatively, you can request autocomplete.xml instead of .json to get an XML document back:

<Completions>
  <Term>sea</Term>
  <Completion score="16">seattle</Completion>
  <Completion score="5">sears</Completion>
  <Completion score="1">search</Completion>
</Completions>