Help with phrase search

Question

User1330806141 posted

I'm creating a search function for one of my sites and I wanted to include a phrase search or exact match. The problem I'm having is, how do I capture the double quotes in the search box?

For example: If I enter "pickup truck" in quotes. The quotes are lost when I assign the value to a string.

dim searchString as string = textbox1.text

Is there a way around this? If so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Jason

 

Answer 1

User188494879 posted

It should be fine. When you assign textbox.text the string you would receive should be something like this:

\"pickup truck\"

Try to debug your app and see the value

Answer 2

User1330806141 posted

when I debug I get pickup truck as my value for searchString. By default anything typed into textbox1 is going to be wrapped in quotes when assigned to a string variable. I was expecting to see something like ""pickup truck"" since I typed quotes into the textbox. But I get "pickup truck".

 

 

Answer 3

User-952121411 posted

Hummm, interesting behavior.  If I try the same code as you describe, i get ""pickup truck"" as you would like to see:

?MyString
""pickup truck""

The code I used was nothing out of the ordinary either; just used an ASP.NET TextBox and some server side code:

Dim MyString As String = Me.TextBox1.Text

 ..and the source:

<asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>

Are you by chance doing anything drastically different?  If yes, can you please post the code?

Answer 4

User1330806141 posted

Wow I'm not so bright sometimes. As I was replying to the above post I thought I would include a code sample and that is when I found my answer. Before processing the request I have a vb class that I use to validate the input. I was stripping the quotes. Thank you all for your replies. I tell the other programmers all the time "the most obvious answer is almost always overlooked".

TextBox1.Text = CommonCode.StripNonWantedCharactersFromSearchbox(TextBox1.Text)

Answer 5

User-952121411 posted

StripNonWantedCharactersFromSearchbox

 

Classic.   Happens to all of us.  Glad you got it working!