Implementing search throught assets/journal articles

Hello,
    Last days I was working about portlet which has to implement some search functionality througth Liferay's web content/journal articles. And i want to share some information related search implementation.

    Main idea of the portlet is to display information in some specific way, and have functionality of local searching and global throug it.
    I had two ways of implementation of such requirement - first way it to develop my own entities with service builder, develop own administration part for it and display those entities. Second way - use web content/journal articles biult-in mechanism. I decided to follow second approach. Main complexity was how to implement search througth Lifery's web content.
   
    For some starting point related Liferay's search it is good to check this article.

    First, let's create some search form:

 <%@ page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.dao.search.SearchContainer"%><%@
  page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.search.SearchContext"%><%@
  page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.search.Hits"%><%@
  page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.search.Indexer"%><%@
  page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.search.Document"%><%@
  page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.search.Field"%><%@
  page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.search.FacetedSearcher"%><%@
  page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.search.facet.Facet"%><%@
  page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.search.facet.AssetEntriesFacet"%><%@
  page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.search.facet.ScopeFacet"%><%@
  page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.search.facet.config.FacetConfiguration"%><%@
  page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.search.facet.config.FacetConfigurationUtil"%><%@
  page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.search.facet.util.FacetFactoryUtil"%><%@
  page import="javax.portlet.PortletURL"%><%@
  page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.util.HtmlUtil"%><%@
  page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.dao.search.ResultRow"%><%@
  page import="com.liferay.portal.kernel.search.SearchContextFactory"%>
 <%
    String searchKeyword = ParamUtil.getString(renderRequest, 'searchKeyword');
 %>
 
        
      

      
        

      Second, create search context and make search:

<%
 List<Document> documents = null;
 SearchContext searchContext = SearchContextFactory.getInstance(request);
 searchContext.setKeywords(searchKeyword);
 searchContext.setEnd(2000);
 searchContext.setStart(0);
   
 String[] entryCalssName = {JournalArticle.class.getName()};
 searchContext.setEntryClassNames(entryCalssName);
 
 Indexer indexer = FacetedSearcher.getInstance();
 
 Hits hits = indexer.search(searchContext);
   
 documents = hits.toList();
%>

        As a result you will have list Document entites, with some fields in it. Now we have to iterate througth them and get AssetEntry and JournalArticle to display.

 <% 
if (documents != null && !documents.isEmpty()) {
 for(Document doc : documents) { 
 
    Long classPK = Long.parseLong(doc.get(Field.ENTRY_CLASS_PK)); 
    
    AssetEntry assetEntry = AssetEntryLocalServiceUtil.getEntry(JournalArticle.class.getName(), classPK);
    
    AssetRendererFactory af = AssetRendererFactoryRegistryUtil
        .getAssetRendererFactoryByClassName(JournalArticle.class.getName());
 
    AssetRenderer assetRenderer = af.getAssetRenderer(assetEntry.getClassPK());
    String renderPath = assetRenderer.render(renderRequest,
                                             renderResponse,
                                             AssetRenderer.TEMPLATE_FULL_CONTENT);
    String renderPortletId = AssetRendererFactoryRegistryUtil
        .getAssetRendererFactoryByClassName(JournalArticle.class.getName()).getPortletId();
 %> 
   

<%=assetEntry.getTitle(locale)%>


   
<%
 }
}
%>

       To see what kind of fields you can retrieve from Document entity check Field class. Tag liferay-util:include will generate full content of Journal article.
   
       In this approach I didn't use SearchContainer and liferay-ui:search-container tag, but they can be really usefull, you can check how they works here.

UPD. If you want to make search through particular entity you can use next code:

Indexer indexer = IndexerRegistryUtil.getIndexer(JournalIndexer.class);
Hits hits = indexer.search(searchContext);
documents = hits.toList();

also for searching through JournalArticle this util can be used:

JournalArticleServiceUtil.search(company.getCompanyId(), themeDisplay.getScopeGroupId(), 0, "", new Double(-1.0), "", "", keyword, "", "", "", null, null, 0, null, false, 0, Integer.MAX_VALUE, null);

BR, Paul