NDSU Web and Directory Search

Project Details

Team Members

• Deovandski Skibinski Junior
• Marc Kostelecky
• Alex Nilles
• Chris Hasse

Problem

Our project consisted of improving the NDSU search page. The current search implementation uses Apache Droids and Apache SOLR to search the NDSU website. Additionally, there is a SOLR directory with which you can search for students, staff, or faculty and find emails, phone numbers, and other information. The goals we were given were to move the search to use Google Custom Search Engine, merge the web search and the directory search, add another searchable SOLR core with other searchable content (building search), and update the UI on both desktop and mobile. We accomplished these goals by implementing an Angular.js framework that would send the search query to both the Google CSE and the SOLR directory asynchronously. The results page was formatted to have the CSE search results on the left side of the page and the SOLR directory results consisting of close matches on the right side. Any directory results that were considered to be an exact match were displayed directly underneath the search bar with more information than would be shown on the right side for a close match result. The search can also be done solely on the SOLR directory by clicking on the directory tab. Here, the user can see all the information on all close match results as well as filter by department and affiliation and sort the results. The search will not allow student to appear as results on a first name base only as per request by the sponsors. Students will only show up on an exact first and last name match.