Django Haystack - Show results without needing a search query?

Question

I would like to display all results which match selected facets even though a search query has not been inserted. Similar to how some shop applications work e.g. Amazon

Answer 1

Why No Results?

I imagine you're using a search template similar to the one in the haystack getting started documentation. This view doesn't display anything if there is no query:

{% if query %}
    {# Display the results #}
{% else %}
    {# Show some example queries to run, maybe query syntax, something else? #}
{% endif %}

The second problem is that the default search form's search() method doesn't actually search for anything unless there's a query.

Getting Results

To get around this, I'm using a custom search form. Here's an abbreviated sample:

class CustomSearchForm(SearchForm):
    ...
    def search(self):
        # First, store the SearchQuerySet received from other processing.
        sqs = super(CustomSearchForm, self).search()

        if not self.is_valid():
          return sqs

        filts = []

        # Check to see if a start_date was chosen.
        if self.cleaned_data['start_date']:
            filts.append(SQ(created_date__gte=self.cleaned_data['start_date']))

        # Check to see if an end_date was chosen.
        if self.cleaned_data['end_date']:
            filts.append(SQ(created_date__lte=self.cleaned_data['end_date']))

        # Etc., for any other things you add

        # If we started without a query, we'd have no search
        # results (which is fine, normally). However, if we
        # had no query but we DID have other parameters, then
        # we'd like to filter starting from everything rather
        # than nothing (i.e., q='' and tags='bear' should 
        # return everything with a tag 'bear'.)
        if len(filts) > 0 and not self.cleaned_data['q']:
            sqs = SearchQuerySet().order_by('-created_date')

        # Apply the filters
        for filt in filts:
            sqs = sqs.filter(filt)

        return sqs

Also, don't forget to change the view:

{% if query or page.object_list %}
    {# Display the results #}
{% else %}
    {# Show some example queries to run, maybe query syntax, something else? #}
{% endif %}

Actually, the view code is a little hackish. It doesn't distinguish query-less searches with no results from search with no parameters.

Cheers!