Search description instead of post content

[iandunn]

Normally Core searches post_content, but that probably won't make sense for most patterns, since that's storing the HTML and demo content. It'd make more sense to search the meta description field instead.

See #11

One way to do this might be to save the description into post_excerpt, instead of a meta field. Then it'd be searched for free. We'd still want to disable searching post_content, though.

That'd also require changing the two APIs that proxy this API, which would be a pain. We might also want to search by other post meta per #11, so we might need that functionality anyway. We'll probably need to update them anyway, as the design evolves, so maybe those updates can be batched together after more are settled.

[iandunn]

Core doesn't provide a lot of ways to customize search results, somewhat intentionally.

• https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/34211#comment:4
• https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/45606#comment:2

It's tempting to create a search_index meta field like #core34211 suggested, but without the API from Core, we'd need to re-create the parse_search() logic around stop words, multiple-word queries, exclusionary operators, etc.

A different approach would be to use w.org's Sphinx service, or Elasticsearch (via Jetpack). That seems like it'll be more practical, so I'm going to look into that.

[iandunn]

@tellyworth , is there any documentation around why the plugin directory uses a forked version of the Jetpack_Search class? Do you think the pattern directory should reuse that, or the canonical version in wp-content/plugins/jetpack?

[iandunn]

WordPress/wordpress.org#33 demonstrates how to integrate w/ Jetpack Search. I think we can mostly do the same things here.

[iandunn]

#307 also has some functionality that should be incorporated: the requested locale should be prioritized rather than exclusive.

[iandunn]

I opened a couple new issues for refinement: #347, #348