Offline Web Search

Question

I have a web application that I want to run offline, in an IPad. All is fine, but I would like a search facility, to search through the various pages on content.

There are plenty of on line search capabilities, especially using Ajax, but I want something that runs offline.

I have seen various people discuss snippets of code that show how searching might work, but I need something that is packages up as follows.

1. A small search text field.
2. When used, a list located pages is listed, each as a link
3. You can click on each link to take you to the page concerned.

Even an un-finished product would give me a better starting point than where I'm at right now.

Thanks in advance, Greg Ambrose

Answer 1

If I'm understanding your needs correctly, you need a search function that, rather than searching your database, would search an already compiled index. If the index was compiled while online, it would still be available offline.

Search Maker Pro has offline search functionality and meets your requirements--see this demo. There's also Zoom Search Engine, an alternative that looks to be good as well. Both of these require, I believe, that you do the indexing on a Windows machine and they are not free, but the best options I've seen unless you want to create the index yourself.

Fullproof, a Javascript-based solution, may be of assistance but it involves creating the index yourself. For further discussion on offline search, you can also see this related post.