How to set Lucene boosting on Predictive Search

It should be: (herotitle:{% QueryString["searchtext"]|(identity)GlobalAdministrator%})^2, but this is a bit dangerous because you dont know a user input, you probably need to filter noise words etc.

Hi Peter,

Gave this a try but it breaks my component with an error stating "The server tag is not well formed".

Hi Jacob,

I don’t know if you made a typo when you asked this question, but in your third code sample you dont have ‘%’ sign when you used macro syntax. It should be like this: PredictiveSearchCondition="herotitle:({%QueryString.searchtext|(identity)GlobalAdministrator%})^2"

Best regards, Dragoljub

Take a look at FAQ The syntax should be: DocumentName:({% QueryString.searchtext |(identity)GlobalAdministrator%}

@peter

I'm able to successfully boost results while using static text i.e., 'batman is a hero'

+herotitle: (batman is a hero)^2

However, your conditional breaks my component with the server error 'The server tag is not well formed'.

@dragoljub - Thank you for catching the syntax error. It was not my intention to remove. Applying that back did not resolve the issue.

You can use quote " or single quote: here are some examples.

PredictiveSearchCondition='{%String.IsNullOrEmpty(QueryString.searchtext)? "" : "herotitle:(" + QueryString.searchtext + ")^2" |(identity)GlobalAdministrator%}'

@Peter

Thanks for the help. I managed to suppress the 'not well formed' error with your conditional. However, the boosting is still not registering.

I've verified that boosting does work with static text 'biology' in the following example.

PredictiveSearchCondition="herotitle:(biology)^2"

However, when dropping the dynamic query string macro in place.

PredictiveSearchCondition="herotitle:({%QueryString.searchtext|(identity)GlobalAdministrator%})^2': Encountered " "}" "} "" at line 1, column 128. Was expecting one of: "TO" ... ... ...

The search text 'biology' definitely exists in my index file. It also appears that QueryString.searchtext is indeed working. What's a dev to do?

Appreciate the help.

Hi Jacob,

It looks like you are using aspx transformation with K# macro expression and because of that macro is not resolved at all (you pass '{%QueryString.searchtext|(identity)GlobalAdministrator%}' as value for boosting which contains forbidden characters). Can you try something like this: PredictiveSearchCondition="herotitle:(<%# Request.QueryString["searchtext"] %>)^2

If this works for you, then you should think about custom macro, or some additional checks before you directly pass query string to predictive search.

Best regards, Dragoljub

@Dragoljub - Thanks for the feedback. Your snippet breaks my component. However, your explanation has definitely helped me to understand the issue. +1

Ok. The problem is with the smart search box webpart i.e. ~/CMSWebParts/SmartSearch/SearchBox.ascx. PredictiveSearchCondition property does not resolve macro . It is missing ContextResolver.ResolveMacroExpression(...) or LocalResolver.ResolveMacros(..) or similar. The current code is:

public string PredictiveSearchCondition
{
    get
    {
        return ValidationHelper.GetString(GetValue("PredictiveSearchCondition"), null);
    }
    set
    {
        SetValue("PredictiveSearchCondition", value);
    }
}

It should be for example:

 get
        {
            return LocalResolver.ResolveMacros(ValidationHelper.GetString(GetValue("PredictiveSearchCondition"), null));
        }

So you can clone this control and create SearchBoxCustom which would be a copy of existing one but you add macro resolver yourself. Or you can do it in pure ASP way if you are not planning not to use macros:

PredictiveSearchCondition='<%# String.IsNullOrEmpty(Request.QueryString["searchtext"])? "": "herotitle:(Request.QueryString[\"searchtext\"])" %>