addedValues Plugin

Search Report Variables

b255 - A new type of variable, that applies to ONLY to Search Results has been implemented. They can only be referenced in the page layout (with and without sortedBy breaks) and the sortedby break layout of search reports. Search result variables cannot be indexed, used as meta values from variables or set templates but are otherwise like all other variable, they appear in the hitList category in the menu on the main variables page.

By itself, a reference does nothing to ensure that values are ever stored in the variable - you control how that is done using new report options which allow you to copy (initialise) into single valued variables or to Accumulate single valued variable values from each hit to multiple valued Search report variables.

For example you might have a message variable called Cost; a search report variable called Costs referenced in the page layout. Accumulating Cost to Costs, means that as each hit is displayed, the value of Cost becomes one more value of Costs. When the page is complete the values from each hit are accessible as Costs{1], Costs[2] etc., but more usefully from computed Search Report variables which calculates values using Vector builtins, for example the computed Variable TotalCost might be the expression sum(Costs).

One very important limitation is that the values stored in Search Report variables are discarded after the layout template in which they appear has been applied. If a search returns sufficient results to create a multiple page report, Costs in our example is contains only values of hits on the currently displayed page.