how to theme search results in Drupal 6

"Documentation" -> "Theme guide (Drupal 6)" -> "Overriding themable output" -> Working with template suggestions

Copy search-results.tpl.php from modules/search to your theme directory, and theme however you like.

===
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." -- Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." -- Benjamin Franklin
"Search is your best friend." -- Worldfallz

I want to add some div's to create theming for the search box on the result page. Does anyone know how to alter the search form in the page mentioned by webcomm?

you can try http://drupal.org/project/ds (and contribution http://drupal.org/project/nd_contrib)

you can make easily what you want for search results

Hi,

I came across this thread while trying to do the same. As it turns out, the Core Search module uses the box template (box.tpl.php in your theme's directory - http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/modules--system--box.tpl.php/6 ) to theme the results. You can see the calls to the theme function in the search.pages.inc file at http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/modules--search--search.pages.inc/funct... (it's in the search_view function).

The box theme is only used in two places - comments and search results. It is used so infrequently, in fact, it was deprecated for Drupal 7. So, note well that this technique is not valid for Drupal 7.

Since template files are just php files at their heart, you can replace the default box.tpl.php in your theme's directory with something like:

/**
 * @file box.tpl.php
 *
 * Theme implementation to display a box modified to handle search results differently based on $title variable.
 *
 * Available variables:
 * - $title: Box title.
 * - $content: Box content.
 *
 * @see template_preprocess()
 */
switch ($title) {
    case "Your search yielded no results": /* We have no results to display */
        $title = "My alternate no results title";
        $content = "My alternate no results message";
    case "Search results": /* We have results to display */
        print "<div class=\"my_search_results_class box\">";
        print "<h2 class=\"my_search_results_class title \">";
        print $title;
        print "</h2>";
        print "<div class=\"my_search_results_class content\">";
        print $content;
        print "</div>";
        print "</div>";
    break;
    default: /* maintain the original box formatting so as not to disrupt the comments styling. */
        print "<div class=\"box\">";
        if ($title) {
            print "<h2>";
            print $title;
            print "</h2>";
        }
        print "<div class=\"content\">";
        print $content;
        print "</div>";
        print "</div>";
    break;
}

The "my_search_results_class" of course, would be defined in the style.css file for your theme. And of course, it need not be a class if that doesn't meet your needs.

Obviously, there is more than one way to handle this in the box.tpl.php file but I figure this is a start for those who want to experiment. I googled for some time and then finally broke down and looked at the search module's source. Alternately, you might handle this with a preprocess function in your template.php file. But it helps to know the hook you'll be looking for is "box."

Other implications, including what you can do with access to the $content variable, I leave as an exercise for the reader to explore.

In the interests of the community, I hope this helps someone.