Changes between Version 23 and Version 24 of AdvancedSearch

Timestamp:

Apr 9, 2010, 2:58:33 PM (14 years ago)

Author:

mem

Comment:

Include Adjacent Searching to a specified depth

AdvancedSearch

@@ -106 +106 @@
 
 On a similar note - it would be nice to add a checkbox for searching (or to explicitly exclude searching) in the Trac documentation. Many times I am searching for something I am either looking something up in the Trac help, or in my project data - rarely do I not know which it is in :-).
+
+== Searching Down Links and Attachments to a Specified Depth ==
+
+It would be exceptionally useful to be able to extend the search to look inside attachments and links and to control the depth of the search. By this I mean that the search would allow for 
+ * a link (depth 1); 
+ * a link within a link (depth 2); 
+ * a link within a link within a link (depth 3); 
+etc 
+
+to be indexed within the search. 
+
+For example I make a link to a page outside my trac setup and on this page there is a pdf file linked, like [http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2010/default.htm#legal Federal Reserve] which contains links including a pdf file [http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2010/pdf/legalq409.pdf]. For example, I could search for "FDIC" and it would turn up in this paper. 
+
+If the external search depth were 2 then the search function would search external links down two levels and include the text FDIC within the pdf document as shown. The unix program lynx is able to recursively locate links to a specified depth. The hack would have to do something similar and then index the pages and files (of allowed types) to be included within the search. It might be most efficient to recognise if the link has changed (either by date or by some hash based upon the data) and only try to index it if it is new or changed. These could be indexed periodically, and/or after the page with the links has been changed.
+
+The beauty of this is that it extends the search from just the trac website to the local nodes of the network and would allow information on adjacent sites specified by links to be searched. 
+
+The same search could be extended to attached files too, that already exist within the trac framework. The file types to search could be specified (pdf txt doc etc).
+
+I put this into requestahack on the trac-hacks site as [http://trac-hacks.org/ticket/6918 (#6918)] but it might be better as part of the core trac project.
+
+