Search Bar | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

The SearchBar component is the main entry point for search querying. It provides the input box where the user types their query, as well as the autocomplete behavior. Search Bars can be used in both Vertical and Universal Search.

Note

If you’re only adding a searchbar to the page (instead of the full experience), we recommend using our searchbar-only assets. They contain only the necessary JS/CSS/hbs for the searchbar component, and are therefore optimized for page speed. The JS component has the exact same API properties as the SearchBar described here, with one exception: it requires a redirectUrl.

Read more about this bundle here , and see the Add Searchbar guide for further integration instructions.

Default Styling

Here is the default styling for a search bar:

And here is the default styling for a search bar with autocomplete showing:

Universal Search

Here is an example of adding a search bar to Universal Search:

<div class="search-bar-container"></div>

ANSWERS.addComponent("SearchBar", {
  container: ".search-bar-container",
});

Vertical Search

Here is an example of adding a search bar to Vertical Search. It’s the same as Universal Search but requires an additional verticalKey.

<div class="search-bar-container"></div>

ANSWERS.addComponent("SearchBar", {
  container: ".search-bar-container",
  verticalKey: "VERTICAL_KEY", // required if not specified in search config in initialization.
});

Redirecting Search

Often you want to add a Search Bar to a page but then redirect to a search results page. This is accomplished via the redirectUrl property. If this property is filled out, the search will redirect when a user hits submit. This URL should be a search results page that includes a UniversalResults or VerticalResults component.

Using HTML5 Geolocation

By default, when a user types a query with “near me” intent (IE “locations near me”), we’ll prompt them to grant access to HTML5 geolocation. If you do not want this behavior, you can set the promptForLocation to false. If you notice consistently lethargic geolocation requests, you can reduce the timeout (geolocationOptions.timeout) or increase the maximum age for a geolocation request (geolocationOptions.maximumAge), and add an optional alert if the request fails (geolocationTimeoutAlert).

Finally, if the accuracy of geolocation information is particularly important, you can enable “high accuracy”, which will provide more accurate geolocation results at the expense of response time and/or device power consumption.

More information on enableHighAccuracy, timeout and maximumAge can be found in the MDN documentation .

ANSWERS.addComponent("SearchBar", {
  container: ".search-bar-container",
  redirectUrl: "https://www.domain.com",
  geolocationOptions: {
    timeout: 500,
    maximumAge: 300000,
    enableHighAccuracy: false
  },
  geolocationTimeoutAlert: {
    enabled: true,
    message: "We are unable to determine your location"
  }

});

Multiple Search Bars

Often you will want to have multiple search bars on a single page. For example one in the header and one in the center of the home page. To accomplish this make sure each search bar has a unique container and name.

ANSWERS.addComponent("SearchBar", {
  container: ".search-bar-container",
  name: "search-bar",
  redirectUrl: "https://www.domain.com/search-results",
});

ANSWERS.addComponent("SearchBar", {
  container: ".search-bar-container-2",
  name: "search-bar-2",
  redirectUrl: "https://www.domain.com/search-results",
});

Typing Placeholder

One nice UI trick to encourage more users to search is to show a user typing in the input. While the Answers JS library doesn’t support this by default, this can easily be added using Typed.js .

First, we will get the options via the /autocomplete endpoint and then we feed those options into the Typed. This should happen after the SearchBar component is added to the page. We are using axios to handle the API request.

Note

If you are hosting data in the EU cloud region, replace the reference to the URL https://liveapi-cached.yext.com with https://cdn-cached.eu.yextapis.com.

var url = `https://liveapi-cached.yext.com/v2/accounts/me/answers/autocomplete`;
url += `?v=20190101`;
url += `&api_key=${apiKey}`;
url += `&sessionTrackingEnabled=false`;
url += `&experienceKey=${experienceKey}`;
url += `&input=`;
url += `&version=${version}`;
url += `&locale=${locale}`;

axios.get(url).then(function(response) {
  // Get strings from response
  const strings = response.data.response.results.map(function(r) {
    return r.value;
  });

  // Set up Typed
  var options = {
    strings,
    showCursor: true,
    cursorChar: "|",
    typeSpeed: 45,
    backSpeed: 20,
    smartBackspace: true,
    loop: true,
    startDelay: 500,
    backDelay: 2000,
    attr: "placeholder",
  };

  var typed = new Typed(".js-yext-query", options);
});

Here is a working example:

Search Bar API

Property	Type	Default	Description
verticalKey	string		The vertical for the search bar. Required if used in vertical search, and not included in the top level search configuration .
query	string		The initial search term in the search bar. Does not apply a query
labelText	string		Label for the search bar. Hidden by default.
submitText	string		The label of the submit button. Hidden by default.
submitIcon	string		Specify pre-built icon for the search bar. If none is specified, the animated search icon will be used. See icons .
customIconUrl	string		A custom icon URL to replace the default search icon.
promptHeader	string		Text label displayed above the autocomplete options.
placeholderText	string		Placeholder text of the search bar
allowEmptySearch	boolean		Allow a user to conduct an empty search. Should be set to true if the defaultInitialSearch in the top level search configuration is “”.
autoFocus	boolean		Auto-focus the search bar on page load.
autocompleteOnLoad	boolean		If `autoFocus` is true, show or display the autocomplete prompts.
searchCooldown	number	300	The number of miliseconds to wait before conducting new searches. Guards against someone rage-clicking the search bar.
promptForLocation	boolean	true	Ask the user for their geolocation when “near me” intent is detected.
clearButton	boolean	true	Display an “x” button to clear the current query.
redirectUrl	string	true	Redirect the search query to url
formSelector	string	form	Form Selector that is provided to the search bar template
inputEl	string	js-yext-query	Input Element that is required if a custom template is used where the input varies.
useForm	boolean	true	When true, a form is used as the query submission context. Note it’s WCAG best practice to set this to `true`.
geolocationOptions	object		Geolocation-related configuration. See Geolocation Documentation for more information.
enableHighAccuracy	boolean		Whether to improve accuracy at the cost of response time and/or power consumption, defaults to false.
timeout	number	1000	The maximum amount of time (in ms) a geolocation call is allowed to take before defaulting, defaults to 1 second.
maximumAge	number	300000	The maximum amount of time (in ms) to cache a geolocation call, defaults to 5 minutes.
geolocationTimeoutAlert	object		Configuration for a native alert, displayed when a call to the geolocation API fails.
enabled	boolean		Whether to display a window.alert() on the page
message	string	We are unable to determine your location	If `enabled` is true, the message in the alert.

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