Search Options

EasyTable Pro provides a range search features over EasyTable for J!, these include field level control over the content that can be searched and a Joomla plugin that integrates EasyTable Pro table data into the built-in search function.

When search terms are found in an EasyTable the results are found inline with the standard Joomla content, as shown in the screenshot below. You will also notice that your users can restrict their searching to just the area of EasyTable Records like any other content type in Joomla. 

Following a link returned in the search results will take your user to the List View for the table showing just the records in the table that match the keywords. In this example below, you can see that the subset four records in the US Presidents table that match against the keyword "georg" are listed:

Setup

After installing the EasyTable Pro component ( com_easytablepro.zip ) and the search plugin ( plg_easytables.zip ) you will need to enable the seach plugin. This is done in the Plugin Manager as shown in the screen shot below:

Turning Search On

Of course you can nominate which tables are searchable by the built-in Joomla search functions. There are two places that control the "searchable" setting for a table. As with the "Published" setting you can toggle the searchable state from the EasyTable Pro manager screen or from the EasyTable Pro editor screen. As shown in the screenshots below.

You can also define a default behaviour for the search preference in EasyTable Pro by opening the components "Parameters" screen and setting the value to "Yes" or "No". For example the screenshot below shows the global "Enable Joomla's Search" has been set to "Yes". If you are upgrading from the free EasyTable for J! component it's recommended that you open the global parameters and set them to the defaults your prefer and then "Save" your choices before you publish any table using EasyTable Pro.

Which Fields to Search?

In the EasyTable Editor screen you can nominate which fields/columns to search in your table. This can be handy for turning of the search for non-relevant fields (eg. image names used in image fields). As you will see in the EasyTable Pro Editor screenshot below it's just a simple matter of toggling the search option (the last column with the magnifying glass icon) next to each field until it reflects the state you want.

When you exclude a field from the search option this affects results returned by both the EasyTable search and the Joomla search plugin.