Passing search string to another web site

[ellenskelly]

Hi all,

We are looking to pass our search term string from the Web Help search to another web site search engine. Has anyone done anything similar to this? If so, how did you retrieve and pass the search string?

Thanks for any information,

-Ellen

[NorthEast]

I don't think you will be able to customise or change the existing search functionality, but you could add your own search.

One possibility would be to add a search box to your WebHelp, e.g. by adding it to the master page.
This search box would be a simple form with an input box. The form action would make a CSH call to the help that passes the search term and a topic to display with the search results.
e.g. the CSH link CSH_YourHelp.htm?searchTerm#searchPage.htm will display WebHelp search results for searchTerm and display the topic searchPage.htm

Now, this searchPage.htm topic could be linked to the other search engine in some way. For example, it could be just simple search box for that site, or maybe you could get it to display the search results from that site (you'll be able to get the search term from the URL).

Anyway, I don't think there's an easy way unless you know what you're doing. If you're not sure, do you work with any web developer types that could help you?

[ellenskelly]

I am back again. We successfully passed our WebHelp Search Term to our external site (it is a community-type web site). Now, what we'd like to do is pass a search term in from that site.

Use case:

User searches external community site and doesn't find what he/she is looking for. There is a link for searching WebHelp. When user clicks, the search term is passed to WebHelp.

So we would need a way for WebHelp to accept and process the search term. Are there any develper tools/APIs that anyone knows of that our developers could work with. Anyone tried anything like this?

-Ellen

[doc_guy]

Have you asked MadCap Support this question? They are probably best equipped to answer this type of question.

[Richard Ferrell]

You want to pass a Search Term To Flare? this would be a csh Call, Please See this KB article http://kb.madcapsoftware.com/Default_CSH.HTM#CSH1005F This points to you various resources.

From Flare's Help file for Webhelp

In the following example, "MyWebHelp" is the main entry file name, "World Cup Standings" is the search string, "FirstPick" indicates that the first topic found in the search will open automatically, and "MyTopic" is the identifier name:

<a href="MyWebHelp_CSH.htm?World Cup Standings|FirstPick#MyTopic" target="_blank">Open the Help system</a>