Understanding search results

As you've seen, you have a choice between XML and JSON when it comes to search results. Whichever format you choose, the results provide the data needed to construct a search application. For example, you could use the following excerpted JSON data:

{ "total": 95, "start": 1, "page-length": 10 }

to construct a search results pagination widget (as on this website's search results page):

Then, you would iterate through each of the objects in the results array:

"results": [ { "index": 1, "uri": "/guide/search-dev.xml", "path": "fn:doc(\"/guide/search-dev.xml\")", "score": 92032, "confidence": 0.672178, "fitness": 0.877356, "matches": [ { "path": "fn:doc(\"/guide/search-dev.xml\")/*:guide/*:para[5]", "match-text": [ "Lexicon and ", { "highlight": "Range Index" }, "-Based APIs..." }, { "path": "fn:doc(\"/guide/search-dev.xml\")/*:guide/*:para[20]", "match-text": [ "no matter what the database size. As part of loading a document, full-text ", { "highlight": "indexes" }, "are created making arbitrary searches fast. Searches automatically use the" } ] } ]

to produce the contents of your search results page:

In addition to the document's score, URI, etc., each result includes a matches array which contains one object for each matching area of text:

And within each match is a match-text array, which is a list of strings which may or may not be highlighted (highlighted when they contain the actual matching term or terms):

The XML version of the results is generally isomorphic to the JSON version. In place of the results, matches, and match-text arrays are the <search:result>, <search:snippet>/<search:match>, and <search:highlight> elements, respectively:

<!--...--> <result index="1" uri="/guide/search-dev.xml" path="fn:doc("/guide/search-dev.xml")" score="92032" confidence="0.672178" fitness="0.877356"> <snippet> <match path="fn:doc("/guide/search-dev.xml")/*:guide/*:para[5]">Lexicon and <highlight>Range Index</highlight>-Based APIs...</match> <match path="fn:doc("/guide/search-dev.xml")/*:guide/*:para[20]">no matter what the database size. As part of loading a document, full-text <highlight>indexes</highlight> are created making arbitrary searches fast. Searches automatically use the</match> </snippet> </result> <!--...-->

The above excerpt of XML results corresponds to the same data as the JSON results we saw.