Simply Advanced Searchbar

A replacement to EPrint's simple searchbar

The simple search functionality in EPrint repositories has some known problems, which lead to inconsistent search results. On the other hand, the advanced search functionality is known for providing more consistent and reliable results.

This plugin aims at combining the ease of use of the simple search bar with the reliability of the advanced search function.

The trick is simple: we divert all the search requests to the advanced search function, allowing the users to specify the search metafields from a drop down menu.

Enjoy!

How to install

You will need to enable and link_lib the package.

One way to do it is:

# clone this repository in eprint3/lib/epm
./eprint3/tools/epm enable [ARCHIVE NAME] simply_advanced_searchbar
./eprint3/tools/epm link_lib simply_advanced_searchbar
#reloading the config and restarting Apache is recommended

At this point, all you need to do is to replace the search bar code in cfg/templates/default.xml with

<epc:phrase ref="simply_advanced_search_searchbar"/>

Please note that it is very likely that further HTML/CSS adjustments will be needed in order to ensure that the search bar looks right in the specific design of your repository.in order to ensure that the search bar looks right in the specific design of your repository.

Finally, you can specify which fields appear in the search bar's drop-down menu by adding them to the array ref in cfg/cfg.d/z_simply_advanced_searchbar.pl in your local config, which looks like this:

$c->{simply_advanced_searchbar_fields} = [qw/
    title
    creators_name
    date
/];