Including Results from API Call in Joomla! Search Results

Question

My organization uses Joomla! for its customer facing site. There is a database that I only have REST API access to. I'm trying to ping that API to include results from it alongside the normal Joomla! site search results.

I wrote the following code going along with the example here: https://docs.joomla.org/J3.x:Creating_a_search_plugin

// Prevent direct access
defined('_JEXEC') or die('Restricted access');

// Require API class
require_once APIClass.php';

class PlgSearchApiinjector extends JPlugin
{
    /**
     * Constructor Function
     */
    public function __construct(&$subject, $config)
    {
        parent::__construct($subject, $config);
        $this->loadLanguage();
    }

    /**
     * Includes this plugin in list of places to search
     */
    public function onContentSearchAreas()
    {
        static $areas = array(
            'plg_apiinjector' => 'API Search Result Injector - Unified Search',
        );
        return $areas;
    }

    /**
     * Pings API and injects results
     */
    public function onContentSearch($text, $phrase = '', $ordering = '', $areas = null)
    {
        $user = JFactory::getUser();
        $groups = implode(',', $user->getAuthorisedViewLevels());

        // If the array is not correct, return it:
        if (is_array($areas)) {
            if (!array_intersect($areas, array_keys($this->onContentSearchAreas()))) {
                return array();
            }
        }

        // Trim spaces from beginning and end of search terms.
        $text = trim($text);

        // Return Array when nothing was filled in.
        if ($text == '') {
            return array();
        }

        // Create new API object and complete search
        $api = new API;
        $results = $api->keywordSearch($text);

        // Create a rows array to return
        $rows = [];

        // Loop through the results and add each one to the rows array.
        foreach ($results as $result) {

            // Extract portion of the result and prepare it for insertion into the $rows[] array.
            $title = $result['Title'];
            $section = 'Catalog';
            $text = $result['Summary'];
            $browsernav = 1;
            $created = date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
            $link = $result['WebLink'];


            $tempObject = (object) array(
                'href' => $link,
                'title' => $title,
                'section' => $section,
                'created' => $created,
                'text' => $text,
                'browsernav' => $browsernav,
            );

            // Add the object to the rows array
            array_push($rows, $tempObject);


            // Return rows object
            return $rows;
        }
    }
}

This isn't working the way I expected. Based on my tests, it doesn't appear that onContentSearch() is ever even being called.

Can someone explain to me what I'm doing wrong?

One more thing... As much as I would love to index the second database and index everything with Tika, that's not an option given the restrictions that are placed on me.

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

Okay... So I figured it out on my own. First, I didn't have consistency in the plugin names. Second, I needed to remove the plg_ prefix from the plugin name.