isaac
September 8, 2023, 6:27pm
15
Hey there @amanintech ,
The search menu and its logic was converted from (deprecated) widgets to glimmer components. The changes are currently hidden behind a group based feature flag, but we have the intention of making the glimmer search menu the new default in the near future. The changes will break any search overrides in your theme so I wanted to raise this to you prior to us making the switch.
Here is the PR for reference.
discourse:main ← discourse:experimental-search-menu
opened 04:07PM - 28 Feb 23 UTC
# Top level view
This PR is the first version of converting the search menu and… its logic from (deprecated) widgets to glimmer components. The changes are hidden behind a group based feature flag. This will give us the ability to test the new implementation in a production setting before fully committing to the new search menu.
# What has changed
The majority of the logic from the widget implementation has been updated to fit within the context of a glimmer component, but it has not fundamentally changed. Instead of having a single widget - [search-menu.js](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/app/assets/javascripts/discourse/app/widgets/search-menu.js) - that built the bulk of the search menu logic, we split the logic into (20+) bite size components. This greatly increases the readability and makes extending a component in the search menu much more straightforward.
That being said, certain pieces needed to be rewritten from scratch as they did not translate from widget -> glimmer, or there was a general code upgraded needed. There are a few of these changes worth noting:
### Search Service
**Search Term** -> In the widget implementation we had a overly complex way of managing the current search term. We tracked the search term across multiple different states (`term`, `opts.term`, `searchData.term`) causing headaches. This PR introduces a single source of truth:
```js
this.search.activeGlobalSearchTerm
```
This tracked value is available anywhere the `search` service is injected. In the case the search term should be needs to be updated you can call
```js
this.search.activeGlobalSearchTerm = "foo"
```
**event listeners** -> In the widget implementation we defined event listeners **only** on the search input to handle things such as
- keyboard navigation / shortcuts
- closing the search menu
- performing a search with "enter"
Having this in one place caused a lot of bloat in our logic as we had to handle multiple different cases in one location. Do _x_ if it is this element, but do _y_ if it is another. This PR updates the event listeners to be attached to individual components, allowing for a more fine tuned set of actions per element. To not duplicate logic across multiple components, we have condensed shared logic to actions on the search service to be reused. For example - `this.search.handleArrowUpOrDown` - to handle keyboard navigation.
### Search Context
We have unique logic based on the current search context (topic / tag / category / user / etc). This context is set within a models route file. We have updated the search service with a tracked value `searchContext` that can be utilized and updated from any component where the search service is injected.
```js
# before
this.searchService.set("searchContext", user.searchContext);
# after
this.searchService.searchContext = user.searchContext;
```
# Views
<img width="434" alt="Screenshot 2023-06-15 at 11 01 01 AM" src="https://github.com/discourse/discourse/assets/50783505/ef57e8e6-4e7b-4ba0-a770-8f2ed6310569">
<img width="418" alt="Screenshot 2023-06-15 at 11 04 11 AM" src="https://github.com/discourse/discourse/assets/50783505/2c1e0b38-d12c-4339-a1d5-04f0c1932b08">
<img width="413" alt="Screenshot 2023-06-15 at 11 04 34 AM" src="https://github.com/discourse/discourse/assets/50783505/b871d164-88cb-405e-9b78-d326a6f63686">
<img width="419" alt="Screenshot 2023-06-15 at 11 07 51 AM" src="https://github.com/discourse/discourse/assets/50783505/c7309a19-f541-47f4-94ef-10fa65658d8c">
<img width="424" alt="Screenshot 2023-06-15 at 11 04 48 AM" src="https://github.com/discourse/discourse/assets/50783505/f3dba06e-b029-431c-b3d0-36727b9e6dce">
<img width="415" alt="Screenshot 2023-06-15 at 11 08 57 AM" src="https://github.com/discourse/discourse/assets/50783505/ad4e7250-040c-4d06-bf06-99652f4c7b7c">
Thanks,
