Editable Constants

The ChadoCustomSearch defines a number of editable constants to make it easy to customize your search.

Title

The human readable title of this search. This will be used in listings and shown on the search page as the title.

public static $title = 'Custom Chado Search';

Module

The machine name of the module providing this search.

public static $module = 'custom_chado_search';

Description

A description of this search. This is shown at the top of the search page and used for the menu item.

public static $description = 'A default search which must be extended.';

Permissions

The machine names of the permissions with access to this search. This is used to map your search to existing permissions. It must be an array and is used in hook_menu(). Some examples include ‘access content’ and ‘administer tripal’.

public static $permissions = ['access content'];

If you want to use custom permissions, make sure to define them first in your module file using hook_permission().

Require Submit

If TRUE, this search will require the submit button to be clicked before executing the query; whereas, if FALSE it will be executed on the first page load without parameters.

public static $require_submit = TRUE;

Note

Keep this in mind when building your query in the getQuery() method. If this variable is set to FALSE, then defaults will be supplied to getQuery() as the filter values.

Paging

If $pager is TRUE, the API will add a simple pager to your search results with a previous and next page link as well as indication of what page they are on. A simple pager is used for speed since it doesn’t require counting the search results which is notoriously slow in PostgreSQL. You can also control the number of items per page using $num_items_per_page.

public static $pager = TRUE;
public static $num_items_per_page = 25;

Note

The API handles adding the pager to the search page. This includes determining which links should be available and changing the filter values to keep track of the page. You need to ensure your getQuery() method returns the appropriate results for a given page.

Menu

This defined the hook_menu definition for this search. At a minimum the path is required.

public static $menu = [
  'path' => 'search/chado',
];

Attached CSS/JS

This allows you to add custom CSS and JS files to your search form and results page.

public static $attached = [
  'css' => [],
  'js' => [],
];

Field/Filter Information

This is arguably the most important editable constant. This is where you indicate the columns you want displayed in your results table (fields) and the filters you want made available to your users (filters).

public static $info = [
  // Lists the columns in your results table.
  'fields' => [
    'column_name' => [
      'title' => 'Title',
      // This keyval is optional. It's used to make the current
      // column a link. The link is made automagically as long as
      // you add the id_column to your query.
      'entity_link' => [
        'chado_table' => 'feature',
        'id_column' => 'feature_id',
      ],
    ],
  ],
  // The filter criteria available to the user.
  // This is used to generate a search form which can be altered.
  'filters' => [
    'column_name' => [
      'title' => 'Title',
      'help' => 'A description for users as to what this filter is.',
    ],
  ],
];

This API supports result links for Tripal Entities. Define the entity link for any field/column in your results table and the API will look up the appropriate bio_data_id given the chado base table id and the name of the base table. This is done using the chado_get_record_entity_by_table() API function provided by Tripal.

Button Text

This allows you to customize the text shown on the submit button at the bottom of the filter form.

public static $button_text = 'Search';