I would love for this module to allow for document searching. So when Drupal indexes the node, could this module also index the attached files' content?

This way Users could use the Drupal search box to search for content and when that content appears in an attached file, the node will appear in the search results.

Of course you couldn't do it for all files types, but if it could search inside common file types, pdf, doc, odt, this would probably cover 90% of a users needs.

Comments

quicksketch’s picture

quicksketch
he/him
commented

I think this would probably need to be a separate module. This would probably require several libraries or extensive logic to open and read binary files like PDF and DOC to index them, and would probably only be used by a very small subset of all FileField users. The main purpose of FileField is to simply get files into a site. What you do with those files afterward is usually left to other modules.

liquidcms’s picture

liquidcms commented

mdrupal - you get anywhere with this?

my client is looking for this feature and asking me to quote.. this means either i will do it or i can subcontract if someone is closer to this.

and yup, quicksketch hit the nail on the head.. will need a new module (hopefully that ties into filefield) that consists of numerous plugins for various content types such as word .docs, ppt, excel, pdf, etc

this is first post i have hit in my search for this but a good place to start :)

not sure i agree with quicksketc though that very few would use this.. i think lots would love it; just would never think it possible. Many sites likely add an Abstract field where the user can fill in some info about the attachment.. so that it can get indexed that way - this removes that requirement as well as provides a much richer indexing of the real content.

since this is such a very cool.. very powerful feature (maybe Drupal will be first cms to offer this) the extension of this has many directions:

- the link field could index scraped content (if html page) or use same doc opener code as this to index external linked docs

- i mentioned similar concept to the Calais people (Calais is an external Reuters service to return suggested taxonomy terms of node content) of passing attached urls or files to their service via their existing Drupal modules to provide back taxonomy options for the node with the link field or file attachment field.

Some pretty cool (i need to get out more) places for this to go.

Peter Lindstrom
LiquidCMS - Content Management Solution Experts

liquidcms’s picture

liquidcms commented

http://drupal.org/project/search_files ouuu.. i'm getting giddy... (i REALLY do need to get out more!!)

markDrupal’s picture

markDrupal commented

I found that same module and have been using it to solve my problem with searching file attachments
#368195: Combining Search Files module with Search module

quicksketch’s picture

quicksketch
he/him
commented
Status: Active » Closed (works as designed)

Great, thanks for posting here. I've added a link to the Search Files module on the FileField project page.