Search Implementation

Overview

Formation implements a two-phase search architecture combining SQL Server full-text search with application-level ranking.

Architecture

sequenceDiagram
    participant Client
    participant Controller
    participant SearchService
    participant SQLServer

    Client->>Controller: GET Schemes with $search
    Controller->>SearchService: Parse query + extract fields
    SearchService->>SQLServer: Phase 1 — CONTAINS full-text search
    SQLServer-->>SearchService: Filtered results
    SearchService->>SearchService: Phase 2 — rank by relevance
    SearchService-->>Controller: Ranked, paged results
    Controller-->>Client: OData response

Query Syntax

The search query supports two types of terms:

Field-specific filters

Prefix with a field name and colon:

status:complete name:"Tower A"

Free-text search

Terms without a field prefix search across all enabled fields:

london residential

Combined

status:complete name:"Tower A" london

Search Options

Each entity defines searchable fields in a *SearchOptions.cs class:

public class SchemeSearchOptions
{
    public bool SchemeName { get; set; }
    public bool Address { get; set; }
    public bool Companies { get; set; }
}

Ranking

Results are ranked by relevance using a scoring algorithm that considers:

1. Exact matches score highest
2. Prefix matches score next
3. Contains matches score lowest
4. Matches in primary fields (e.g., Name) score higher than secondary fields