Overriding core search_view menu callback

Thanks for your reply. I initially tried using hidden field elements via hook_form_alter, but that leaves me open to URL manipulation, since the term ID will be included in the URL for the results page.

Taxonomy as a view filter is tempting, but the taxonomy is dynamically selected based on various criteria, and needs to be provided to the view as a default argument. So I wind up with code to manage that anyway. I prefer to keep views self-contained (and don't want to store php code in the database).

Directly altering how core search functions seems the cleanest option to me. I'll look harder at altering the menu callback, which is what I couldn't get working for this specific menu callback in the first place.

For anyone else trying to do this - hook_menu_alter is the way to go if you want to manipulate the search before and after it gets done, but you want to override the page callback for 'search/node/%menu_tail', not the page callback for 'search':

/**
 * Implementation of hook_menu_alter().
 */
function mymodule_menu_alter(&$items) {
  $items['search/node/%menu_tail']['page callback'] = '_mymodule_search_view';
}

/**
 * Override for search_view().
 *
 * @see
 *   /modules/search/search_pages.inc
 */
function _mymodule_search_view($type = 'node') {
  // paste the content of search_view() here and modify
}