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One-click searches

MiniVend allows you to pass a search in a URL. Just specify the search with the special page reference scan. Here is an example:

     [page scan se=Impressionists/sf=category]
        Impressionist Paintings
     [/page]

Here is the same thing from a home page (assuming /cgi-bin/vlink is the CGI path for MiniVend's vlink):

     <A HREF="/cgi-bin/vlink/scan/se=Impressionists/sf=category">
        Impressionist Paintings
     </A>

The two-letter abbreviations are mapped with these letters:

  DL  mv_raw_dict_look        ms  mv_min_string
  MM  mv_more_matches         ne  mv_negate
  SE  mv_raw_searchspec       nu  mv_numeric
  ac  mv_all_chars            op  mv_column_op
  bd  mv_base_directory       os  mv_orsearch
  bs  mv_begin_string         ra  mv_return_all
  co  mv_coordinate           rd  mv_return_delim
  cs  mv_case                 rf  mv_return_fields
  de  mv_dict_end             rg  mv_range_alpha
  df  mv_dict_fold            rl  mv_range_look
  di  mv_dict_limit           rm  mv_range_min
  dl  mv_dict_look            rn  mv_return_file_name
  do  mv_dict_order           rs  mv_return_spec
  dp  mv_delay_page           rx  mv_range_max
  dr  mv_record_delim         se  mv_searchspec
  em  mv_exact_match          sf  mv_search_field
  er  mv_spelling_errors      sp  mv_search_page
  fi  mv_search_file          sq  mv_sql_query
  fm  mv_first_match          st  mv_searchtype
  fn  mv_field_names          su  mv_substring_match
  hs  mv_head_skip            tc  mv_sort_command
  id  mv_index_delim          tf  mv_sort_field
  lr  mv_search_line_return   to  mv_sort_option
  ml  mv_matchlimit           ty  mv_sort_crippled
  mm  mv_max_matches          un  mv_unique
  mp  mv_profile              va  mv_value

They can be treated just the same as form variables on the page, except that they can't contain spaces, '/' in a file name, or quote marks. These characters can be used in URL hex encoding, i.e. %20 is a space, %2F is a /, etc. -- &sp; or   will not be recognized. If you use one of the methods below to escape these ``unsafe'' characters, you won't have to worry about this.

IMPORTANT NOTE: An incompatibility in earlier MiniVend catalogs is specifying [page scan/se=searchstring] on a [new] parsed page. This is interpreted by the new parser as [page scan/se="searchstring"] and will cause a bad URL. Change this to [page scan se=searchstring] to make those earlier catalogs work with MiniVend 3.10 and higher.

Beginning in MiniVend 3.08, you may specify a one-click search in three different ways. The first is as used in previous versions, with the scan URL being specified completely as the page name; this will only work in a [compat] [/compat] region or on an [old] page. The second two use the ``argument'' parameter to the [page ...] or [area ...] tags to specify the search (an argument to a scan is never valid anyway).

Original

If you wish to do an OR search on the fields category and artist for the strings ``Surreal'' and ``Gogh'', while matching substrings, you would do:

 [page scan se=Surreal/se=Gogh/os=yes/su=yes/sf=artist/sf=category]
    Van Gogh -- compare to surrealists
 [/page]

In this method of specification, to replace a / (slash) in a file name (for the sp, bd, or fi parameter) you must use the shorthand of ::, i.e. sp=results::standard. (This may not work for some browsers, so you should probably either put the page in the main pages directory or define the page in a search profile.)

Multi-line

You can specify parameters one to a line, as well.

    [page scan
        se="Van Gogh"
        sp=lists/surreal
        os=yes
        su=yes
        sf=artist
        sf=category
    ] Van Gogh -- compare to surrealists [/page]

Any ``unsafe'' characters will be escaped. If you need to search for trailing spaces (unlikely) you must quote.

Ampersand

You can substitute & for / in the specification and be able to use / and quotes and spaces in the specification.

 [page scan se="Van Gogh"&sp=lists/surreal&os=yes&su=yes&sf=artist&sf=category]
    Van Gogh -- compare to surrealists
 [/page]

Any ``unsafe'' characters will be escaped.

New syntax and old syntax handle the tags the same, though if by some odd chance you wanted to be able to search for a ] (right square bracket) you would need to use new syntax.

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