# QuickSearch

> Note: This code has recently been converted to a Rails Gem Engine. It is encouraged that you use this version, but if you are
> looking for the original release of QuickSearch as a standalone Rails project, it can be found here:
> https://github.com/NCSU-Libraries/quick_search/tree/pre-gem

QuickSearch is a customized federated search tool designed to connect people to a variety of library resources, services, and tools. QuickSearch is designed to complement and increase use of existing dedicated library resource discovery tools, such as the catalog, electronic resource search, and subject guides/portals, by directing people to them via an intuitive search interface. The aim of QuickSearch is to provide people with a quick and easy way to find the information they need.

For more information about NCSU Libraries' QuickSearch and the history of the project, see: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/reports/quicksearch

For NCSU Libraries' implementation of QuickSearch, see:
http://search.lib.ncsu.edu

## Features

- Single search with bento-box style results
- Modular
  - swap out searcher modules and themes easily
  - choose from a variety of existing searchers or create your own
- Best Bets
- Search analytics

## Disclaimer

This code has been extracted from the code we have been running in
production, but still should be considered an early release.

## Installation

The aim of QuickSearch is to make it very easy to get up and running. There are several ways that you can go about installing it, depending on your situation.

### Vagrant

If you’re interested in trying out QuickSearch, or you’re a developer looking to get a development environment up and running, the easiest way is to use Vagrant to create a virtual environment which automatically installs QuickSearch and its dependencies in only a couple easy steps.

This method uses Ansible playbooks to provision the virtual environment
and install QuickSearch, so it is a good guide to see how you might
configure a server for a QuickSearch production envrionment.

#### Prerequisites

- Vagrant 1.8+ (http://www.vagrantup.com)
- VirtualBox (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads)

#### Instructions

##### Clone this repository

    git clone git@github.com:ncsu-libraries/quick_search

##### Change into the cloned directory

    cd quick_search

##### Run

    vagrant up

> Note: sometimes the provisioning process will hang at the "dev-bundle |
bundle install" step. If this happens, press Ctrl+C to kill the process,
then run the following command to continue the provisioning process:

    vagrant provision

#####Once this completes, you'll have a running instance of QuickSearch available at http://localhost:8888/

### Manual Installation

Follow these instructions to manually install QuickSearch for
development.

#### Prerequisites

- Rails 4.1
- Ruby 2.1
- MySQL development headers (mysql-devel package on CentOS)
- qtwebkit development headers (qtwebkit-devel package on CentOS)

#### Instructions

##### Create a new Rails app, cd into the directory:

    rails new my_app

    ...

    cd my_app

##### Add quick_search_core gem to your Gemfile:

    gem 'quick_search_core'

> For development, use: gem 'quick_search_core', :git => 'git://github.com/NCSU-Libraries/quick_search.git'

##### Run 'bundle install'

##### Run the QuickSearch installation generator:

    bundle exec rails generate quick_search:install

##### Configure QuickSearch (see [Configuring QuickSearch](docs/configuration.md))

##### Start the server:

    bundle exec rails s

##### QuickSearch will be available at http://localhost:3000/

## Documentation

Find more in-depth documentation about QuickSearch in the [docs
directory](docs/README.md)

## Customizing QuickSearch

QuickSearch is built in a modular way, and is easy to modify or extend.
For more in-depth documentation about this, see:

- [Customizing QuickSearch Searchers](docs/customizing_searchers.md)
- [Customizing QuickSearch Themes](docs/customizing_themes.md)

### Searchers

Here are a list of searchers that have been created for QuickSearch so
far. Feel free to submit a pull request to add to this list.

|Searcher                |Repository URL                                                        |
|------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------|
|arXiv                   |http://github.com/NCSU-Libraries/quick_search-arxiv_searcher          |
|Wikipedia               |http://github.com/NCSU-Libraries/quick_search-wikipedia_searcher      |
|OpenLibrary             |http://github.com/NCSU-Libraries/quick_search-open_library_searcher   |
|Summon                  |Coming soon                                                           |
|NCSU Libraries' Catalog |Coming soon                                                           |



### Themes

|Theme          |Repository URL                                                      |
|---------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------|
|Generic Theme  |http://github.com/NCSU-Libraries/quicksearch-generic_theme          |


## TODO

There are still some TODOs left in terms of extracting this code from
our production codebase:

- Fix tests
- Improve documentation

## Bugs, Feature Requests, etc.

To report bugs, or request features, please use GitHub issues. We also
welcome pull requests!

## Authors

Here are the people who have contributed code to this implementation of
QuickSearch (listed in alphabetical order)

- Kevin Beswick
- Cory Lown
- Jason Ronallo

## License

See MIT-LICENSE