Need to pass search query into URL string using custom params - search

Question

I have a simple search form that looks like this:
<form action="http://www.theurltosearch.com" method="post">
<input class="search-box" name="query" type="text" value="search all reports" />
<input type="submit" name="search" />
</form>
What I'm trying to accomplish
The search is pointing to whats really a filtering system using tags.
In order for the user to properly see the results of what they queried the query url has to look something like this http://www.theurltosearch.com/#/Kboxes the # and the K are important as its how the tagging system returns results where K stands for keyword.
For multi term queries the url has to look like this separated by a comma http://www.theurltosearch.com/#/Kboxes,Kmoving
A user should also get results when they enter a string query something like http://www.theurltosearch.com/#/K%22more%20stuff%22
Right now if someone used the search it would just take them to the url and not actually display any results matching their query.
How can I manipulate the url string to return the results how I've shown above?
My actual attempt
<script type="text/javascript">
window.onload = function(){
var form = document.getElementById("reports-search");
form.onsubmit = function(){
var searchText = document.getElementById("search-reports");
window.location = "http://www.urltosearch.com/#/K" + searchText.value;
return false;
};
};
</script>
<form id="reports-search" method="get">
<input class="search-box" id="search-reports" type="text" value="search all reports" /><!--search term was analysis-->
<input type="submit" name="search" />
</form>
returns
http://www.urltosearch.com/#/Kanalysis
and displays all results with the analysis tag
This attempt works succesfully if someone is searching a single keyword but not if the user is searching multiple or a string
How do I change the JS to achieve the other options?

Answer 1

Okay, here's a dog'n'bird implementation (ruff,ruff, cheap,cheap).
I've allowed the user to enter multiple terms, each separated with the pipe character | If you wish to allow the user to enter a url in essentially the same format as they'd receive by 'normal' keywords, you may wish to check the entered text first and if found, simply pass it straight through without changing it.
You'll notice, I've wrapped all search terms with " ", regardless of whether the term is multi-word or not. You could easily differentiate between a single-word term and a multi, by searching the string for a space character after the string.trim has removed leading/trailing spaces. I.e
if (trimmedTerm.indexOf(' ') == -1)
{
// single word search term
}
else
{
// multi-word search term here
}
Anyway, here's a working demo, hope it gives insight.
function byId(id){return document.getElementById(id)}
// useful for HtmlCollection, NodeList, String types
function forEach(array, callback, scope){for (var i=0,n=array.length; i<n; i++)callback.call(scope, array[i], i, array);} // passes back stuff we need
window.addEventListener('load', onDocLoaded, false);
function onDocLoaded(evt)
{
byId('goBtn').addEventListener('click', onGoBtnClicked);
}
function onGoBtnClicked(evt)
{
// get the user input
var inputString = byId('userInput').value;
// split it into an array of terms, based on the | char
var searchTerms = inputString.split('|');
// init the result
var result ='';
// for each element in the array of search terms, call the function to trim wrap with "" and encode
forEach(searchTerms, addCurTermToResult);
// update the output display
byId('output').textContent = 'http://www.theurltosearch.com/#/' + result;
function addCurTermToResult(curTerm, index)
{
if (index != 0) // put a comma before all terms except the first one
result += ',';
var trimmedTerm = curTerm.trim(); // remove leading/trailing spaces
result += 'K' + encodeURI('"' + trimmedTerm + '"' ); // wrap with "" then URI encode it, suitable for use as a URL
}
}
.panel
{
border: solid 1px black;
border-radius: 8px;
padding: 8px;
background-color: #eef;
display:inline-block;
}
.panel textarea
{
width: 500px;
height: 200px;
}
<div class='panel'>
<textarea type='text' id='userInput' placeholder='Enter tags or a url. tags should be seperated with the | character'></textarea>
<div style='text-align: center'><button id='goBtn'>Submit</button></div>
<hr>
<label>URL: <span id='output'></span></label>
</div>