The Search and Retrieve API provides a means for looking up content from an application based on search criteria including related content and returning the relevant fields for a specific use case. The application can be an iOS or Android mobile app or it could be a web application or a web site requesting the content. The Search and Retrieve API can be used to search for any content, but it is especially useful for headless content because it allows for referenced content to be included and it also offers field filtering. It is very fast thanks to it use of the Apache Solr search engine and because it retrieves content via the XperienCentral cache. The search queries are concise and written either in JSON which is usually used when querying from code or in YAML which is easier to read and write when developing or testing queries.

In order to use this functionality, you need XperienCentral versions R32 and higher or versions R27 and higher if you have the  Headless Add-on upgraded to version 2.2.5 or higher. The setting search_retrieve_enabled in the headless_search_retrieve section on the General tab of the Setup Tool must be enabled. A free tool for sending these types of requests is Postman.

In This Topic

Basic Usage

To send an HTTP POST request to https://yoursite.com/web/searchretrieve/v1/yaml, the search query would be:

search:
  text: The text to search for in your content

This open query will return JSON containing the contents of all content items matching the text in all languages. For example:

{
  "results" : [ {
    "_searchRetrieve" : {
      "contentItemID" : "M123",
      "language" : "nl_NL",
      "success" : true
    },
    ... JSON contents of the first result ...
  }, {
    "_searchRetrieve" : {
      "contentItemID" : "P12345",
      "language" : "en_US",
      "success" : true
    },
    ... JSON contents of the first result ...
  } ]
}

To retrieve results 11 to 20 of content items in English with the keywords, tags, labels and terms) "news" and "sports", the query would be:

search:
  keywordsAnd:
  - news
  - sports
  languages:
  - en_US
  from: 11
  to: 20

To retrieve the Dutch content item versions for the content items with ID M1 and P26111, the query would be"

search:
  ids: 
  - M1
  - P26111
  languages:
  - nl

Back to top

Releases and Work in Progress

The first version of the Search and Retrieve API was released in XperienCentral version R32. It contains the functionalities described here and is intended to be used in a development environment but should not be used in a production environment. The following functionality will be added in later versions in order to make the API production ready:

• Rate limitations to protect the server from Denial of Service attacks ("DDoS") and other security enhancements
• The inclusion of referenced items in the response
• Field filtering to only retrieve relevant fields in the response
• Support for more types of search criteria including custom fields

If you have access to our the GX Software Jira issue tracking system, see thttps://connect.gxsoftware.com/jira/browse/XA-636 and its sub-tasks for all the technical details. The XperienCentral Headless add-on which contains this functionality can be upgraded without upgrading XperienCentral.

Back to top

Search Requests

URL

A search query is constructed using an HTTP POST request to a URL as follows:

https://yoursite.com/web/searchretrieve/v1/yaml

Both HTTPS and HTTP are accepted as well as other context paths. To construct a search query in JSON format, use a URL that ends in /json:

https://yoursite.com/web/searchretrieve/v1/json

Search Query

YAML

The examples here are written in YAML, but JSON is also supported. In general, YAML is easier to read and write and can be written quickly which makes it useful for doing search queries by hand. JSON is the more logical choice when serializing an object for the search query in your code or if you are more comfortable using it.

This YAML

search:
  ids: 
  - M123
  - P12345
  languages:
  - nl

translates to this JSON:

{
  "search": {
    "ids": [
      "M123",
      "P12345"
    ],
    "languages": [
      "nl"
    ]
  }
}

Notice that the content of an object (map) is on a separate level in the YAML example and that its own indent level and list items are denoted by hyphens ("-"). You can easily convert between these two formats at json2yaml.com.

IDs and ID-based Lookup

There are various different IDs used in XperienCentral for different purposes. Content Item IDs are used to request specific content items via this API, often in combination with a specific language. That will return the current active version in that language. Version IDs are never used in the API. A content item is either a page or a media item. Since the numerical ID used for pages and media items might overlap, this internal ID is prefixed by either a "P" (for page) or an "M" (for media items) in this API. If the ID of a content item is already known from a previous search request, it can easily be retrieved using the ID's parameter as shown in the example above.

Languages and "Display-on" Pages

Query results can be limited to either one or a number of explicit languages using the languages parameter. See the Search Parameters below for details on the format. A media item is rendered via its "display-on" page. The language of the media item determines the language version of the display-on page, therefore ensure that a display-on page is available for each supported language.

Back to top

Responses

Successful Responses

A successful response contains a results field that contains a list of results (see the examples above) . A successful result always starts with the following field:

    "_searchRetrieve" : {
      "contentItemID" : "M123",
      "language" : "nl_NL",
      "success" : true
    }

As you can see, the response contains the Content Item ID, language and a field indicates whether it was successful. The JSON that comes thereafter is determined by the JSON presentation of the content item.

Response item errors

Notice: Possibly subject to change in the next version

If there is an error for a specific item, the result for that item will look like this:

    "_searchRetrieve" : {
      "error" : "A message describing the error",
      "success" : false
    }

This rarely happens, since these items are usually not even returned by the search. Therefore this situation may be fully removed so that items with errors will never be returned at all.

Failed search request

A search might fail, for example because of a malformed search query. In that case the response will contain an error message. Since an internal parse error is passed on it might look complicated like this:

{
  "error" : "Error parsing search query: Unrecognized field \"idsxxx\" (class nl.gx.product.wmaheadlesssearchretrieveapi.api.data.SearchDefinition), not marked as ignorable (9 known properties: \"keywordCategories\", \"keywordsNot\", \"from\", \"text\", \"keywordsOr\", \"keywordsAnd\", \"ids\", \"languages\", \"to\"])\n at [Source: java.io.StringReader@4e4183f0; line: 3, column: 4] (through reference chain: nl.gx.product.wmaheadlesssearchretrieveapi.api.data.SearchAndRetrieveQuery[\"search\"]->nl.gx.product.wmaheadlesssearchretrieveapi.api.data.SearchDefinition[\"idsxxx\"])"
}

Still, if you look carefully it can tell you that a field name idsxxx was used in place of one of the valid ones listed, including ids.

Back to top

Settings

There is only one setting for the API in the Setup Tool ("/web/setup"), but it is an important one, since its checkbox must be checked to enable access to the API. The setting is called:

search_retrieve_enabled

Search parameters

The list below are the currently supported parameters for querying the Search & Retrieve API. This list will be expanded in future releases.

search: 
  ids:
  - P26111
  - M1

{
"search": {
  "ids": [
    "P26111",
    "M1"
 ]}
}

search: 
  languages:
  - en_US
  - nl

{
"search": {
  "languages": [
    "en_US",
    "nl"
  ]}
}

search:
  text: lorem

{
"search": {
  "text": "lorem"
  }
}

search:  
  keywordsAnd:
  - term 1
  - term 2

{
"search": {
  "keywordsAnd": [
    "term 1",
    "term 2"
  ]}
}

search:  
  keywordsOr:
  - term 1
  - term 2

{
"search": {
  "keywordsOr": [
    "term 1",
    "term 2"
  ]}
}

search:
  keywordsNot:
  - term 1
  - term 2

{
"search": {
  "keywordsNot": [
    "term 1",
    "term 2"  
  ]}
}

search:
  keywordCategories:
  - term category 1
  - term category 2

{
"search": {
  "keywordCategories": [
    "term category 1",
    "term category 2"
  ]}
}

search:
  from: 3

{
"search": {
  "from": 3
  }
}

search:
  to: 3

{
"search": {
  "to": 5
  }
}