add hook to mlSearch.search for temporary search expansion

[patrickmcelwee]

In a couple demos, I have wanted to perform a temporary search expansion that does not have any side effects (like adding additional constraints or qtext in the UI). Both are semantic search extensions. In one case, I wanted to expand the qtext with shotgun 'or'; in another, I want to add additional json-property constraints with a shotgun 'or'.

In both cases, I changed ml-search-ng.js, but I think we could support this kind of use-case with a hook in mlSearch.search(): just before calling mlRest.search(), call a user-defined function if it exists. So, right here we could add code like:

      if ( manipulateParams ) {
        params = manipulateParams(params);
      }

The user could pass their custom manipulation function into mlSearch.search as an optional parameter, in the search controller:

function expandQuery(searchParams) {
  console.log('now I can manipulate the searchParams for expansion or whatever');
  return searchParams;
}

ctrl._search = function() {
  this.searchPending = true;
  var promise;
  if (ctrl.shouldExpand) {
    promise = this.mlSearch.search(null, expandQuery);
  } else {
    promise = this.mlSearch.search();
  }
  this.updateURLParams();
  return promise.then( this.updateSearchResults.bind(this) );
};

Or, if want to make it easier, without requiring ctrl._search to be rewritten, mlSearch could have a setter function for the param-manipulation function. But that would then require the user to remove the manipulation in case they don't want it, so not sure which is better.

Also, I don't really understand if this would interact with the combined part of mlSearch.search.

[patrickmcelwee]

We could also pass in an options object ({manipulateSearchParams: expandQuery}) to leave open the door to adding other hooks in the future without exploding the number of potential arguments to mlSearch.search

[grtjn]

Wondering if you couldnt use additionalQueries for the constraints, and simply connect the search bar with a different ctrl property. You can then overload ctrl.search to expand your qtext, and save it in ctrl.qtext before calling super.

Would be interesting to discuss these kind of things in the group..

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