External Indexing works with test url encoding, but no results shown from html search box

[Tom Williams]

Hello Everyone,
I have been using doxygen for years, but just recently tried to get the external indexing to work. I have very carefully followed the directions here: https://www.doxygen.nl/manual/extsearch.html, and set up a clean linux server with apache just for testing this feature.

The place I have been stuck on for many days now is that when I do a search from the search box on the html page, I a page with the title Search Results is display, but it is completely blank. This is what I know so far:
- Running doxygen 1.8.20

• HTML is generated on windows 10. Server is linux (Amazon AWS) using doxysearch.cgi

• Tried converting searchdata.xml conversion with doxyindexer both from windows and on linux with same non-working results

• If I do a html search for something I know is not in the index, the I get the proper "Sorry, no documents matching your query.".

• If I do a command line test for "timer", things work fine: http://myserver/cgi-bin/doxysearch.cgi?q=timer&n=20&p=1&cb=dummy. I can see the JSON and all the appropriate results. The first few lines are:

dummy({
  "hits":100,
  "first":20,
  "count":20,
  "page":1,
  "pages":5,
  "query": "timer",
  "items":[
  {"type": "page",
   "name": "examplesPage::exampleTimersGroup::exampleTimersGroup-Stopwatch",
   "tag": "",
   "url": "example_timers_group-_stopwatch.html",
   "fragments":[
   ]
  },

• By debugging/stepping through the search.js code I think I see the problem. When using the html search on a value that is in the index, function(data) is never executed. But when something is not in the index, it is.
  Here is a snippet from the javascript debugger with a breakpoint at the function:

function searchFor(query,page,count) {
  $.getJSON(serverUrl+"?cb=?",
  {
    n:count,
    p:page,
    q:query
  },
  function(data) {
    var results = $('#searchresults');
    $('#MSearchField').val(query);

Here the values are: query = "timer", page = 0, count = 20. If I stop at this breakpoint, and change the value of page from 0 to 1, the page renders with all the correct results. In the case were the search term is not in the index, all the values are 0.

I also used wireshark packet capture and verified all the correct data was being sent from the server to the client, the same data I see when I do the manual URL test.

This really has me stuck, any ideas or comments are greatly appreciated. In the end what I'm looking for is a much better search function than the default. To summarize:
- Get proper output when a search term is not in the index
- Works with URL encoding with doxysearch.cgi
- Search Result page is blank when a search is done with a term that is in the index

[Tom Williams]

Found out a little more information. In search.js the $.getJSON(serverUrl+"?cb=?",...) function does not result in any "data" to process. The data variable is null.

function searchFor(query,page,count) {
  $.getJSON(serverUrl+"?cb=?",
  {
    n:count,
    p:page,
    q:query
  },
  function(data) {
    var results = $('#searchresults');

However, if the searchFor(query, 0, 20) function changes the page from 0 to 1, searchFor(query, 1, 20), then the data variable contains:

data = {hits: 100, first: 20, count: 20, page: 1, pages: 5, …}

like it should, so the page can be displayed.

[gulabkhan]

[Tom Williams]

Narrowed it down. On the page 0 search for 20 entries, it gets to number 8 and doxysearch throws an error. This is the last entry, number 7, from the query, and the error message.

 {"type": "page",
   "name": "examplesPage::examplePlatformSpecificGroup::platformExamples-MCF::examplePulseGeneratorAndCounter-MCF",
   "tag": "",
   "url": "example_pulse_generator_and_counter.html",
   "fragments":[
     "... generate a waveform output on one <span class=\"hl\">timer</span> and use the <span class=\"hl\">timer</span> capture feature...",
     "... generate a waveform output on one <span class=\"hl\">timer</span> and use the <span class=\"hl\">timer</span> capture feature...",
     "... generate a waveform output on one <span class=\"hl\">timer</span> and use the <span class=\"hl\">timer</span> capture feature..."
   ]
  },
({"error":"Unknown Exception!"})

Looks like its coming from doxysearch.cpp:

  catch (...) // Any other exception
  {
    showError(callback,"Unknown Exception!");
    exit(1);
  }

[joekyle]