Mobile in-app search [GSOC 2014]: Introducing myself

[Sanjana Shankar]

Hello,

I'm a 3rd year undergrad student of computer science from India. I'm
interested in the mobile in-app search for pages, posts and comments. I've
done some programming with Android and I've started trying to fix some bugs
and familiarize myself with the WordPress Android codebase.

I have a question about the description of the problem given on the codex.
Is the "user" specified the person who has logged in on the app so this
search is local to his posts and pages only? I also had an extension of
this idea whereby the search applies for the blogs that appear in the
Reader tab also, hence adding the search feature on the wordpress.com site
to the mobile app. I'd also like to suggest a more context based search
that reorders posts according to the type of post that the user is reading
currently. For example, if a user searches for travel, only posts that have
been tagged as "travel" show up presently. But if he is reading posts which
contain anecdotes about travel as opposed to posts about how to prepare to
travel to a particular place then the search results should change to show
him more blogs tagged with both "travel" and "humour".

Would this be applicable to the mobile search idea? Please let me know if
I'm heading in the right direction and what I could do to start off on this
or if I should submit this as a separate idea. I'd love to work with
WordPress.

Thanks,
Sanjana

[Eric Johnson]

Hi Sanjana,

Post by Sanjana Shankar
Is the "user" specified the person who has logged in on the app so

this search is local to his posts and pages only?

Yep yep. The project scope would be just the content synced to the app,
not what was on the web.

Post by Sanjana Shankar
I also had an extension of this idea whereby the search applies for

the blogs that appear in the Reader tab

I suggest keeping the scope just to the user's own blog(s) for your
project proposal.

Cheers!
Eric

Post by Sanjana Shankar
Hello,
I'm a 3rd year undergrad student of computer science from India. I'm
interested in the mobile in-app search for pages, posts and comments. I've
done some programming with Android and I've started trying to fix some bugs
and familiarize myself with the WordPress Android codebase.
I have a question about the description of the problem given on the codex.
Is the "user" specified the person who has logged in on the app so this
search is local to his posts and pages only? I also had an extension of
this idea whereby the search applies for the blogs that appear in the
Reader tab also, hence adding the search feature on the wordpress.com site
to the mobile app. I'd also like to suggest a more context based search
that reorders posts according to the type of post that the user is reading
currently. For example, if a user searches for travel, only posts that have
been tagged as "travel" show up presently. But if he is reading posts which
contain anecdotes about travel as opposed to posts about how to prepare to
travel to a particular place then the search results should change to show
him more blogs tagged with both "travel" and "humour".
Would this be applicable to the mobile search idea? Please let me know if
I'm heading in the right direction and what I could do to start off on this
or if I should submit this as a separate idea. I'd love to work with
WordPress.
Thanks,
Sanjana
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[Sanjana Shankar]

Thanks Eric!

Out of curiosity though, would the WordPress community be interested in
seeing a context based search? It's a feature that I'd love to have. Would
the forums be a better place to find out if other people would also like to
have something like it?

[Eric Johnson]

Post by Sanjana Shankar
Out of curiosity though, would the WordPress community be interested in
seeing a context based search? It's a feature that I'd love to have. Would
the forums be a better place to find out if other people would also like to
have something like it?

Hi Sanjana,

I agree, its a neat idea. :) However, it sounded like it was focused on
the reader, which is something that requires a WordPress.com account to
get full use of. Since, WordPress.org is the GSoC sponsor, we'd like to
focus on features that benefit the entire WP community.

That's my opinion anyway. Maybe someone else would like to chime in?

Eric