Meta Parsing to display thumbnail image from meta tag data

mike173 · Post by **mike173** » Wed Sep 17, 2003 4:54 pm

Hello!

I'd like to begin recommending your product to our AbleCommerce customers wanting a best of breed search solution. For ecommerce we need the ability to show a product icon (if available) with an add to basket button generated from the meta information in the top of the indexed product pages.

Included HTML Snippet:

<META NAME="Title" CONTENT="My Product Title">
<META NAME="RetailPrice" CONTENT="30.0000">
<META NAME="SmallImage" CONTENT="productThumbnail.jpg">
<META NAME="SkuNumber" CONTENT="15440148">
<META NAME="ObjectGroupID" CONTENT="65">
<META NAME="CategoryID" CONTENT="17">

I have found some information in the message board on changing the query to get the meta data, but can the Texis scripting language be used to parse the meta data to create the <img src="productthumbnail.jpg"> and form action needed to add the product to the basket from the other data?

Kind Regards,
Mike Randolph

Post by **mark** » Wed Sep 17, 2003 5:54 pm

You should really be using full Texis for e-commerce (see license attachment A). But if you store just the meta SmallImage in the Meta field you can easily print out
<img src="$Meta">
after including Meta in the columns selected during search.

If you have other meta items in meta you could extract the jpg with
<rex "[^\n]+>>\.jpg" $Meta><$image=$ret>
<img src="$image">

mike173 · Post by **mike173** » Wed Sep 17, 2003 5:54 pm

Hello John,

Thank you very much for your prompt reply, it would seem that it would require the same splitting apart of the data either during the walk (to add the data to custom fields) or after by retreiving the meta field as a whole. I couldn't find the pricing for the full Texis product, but I know that the webinator is certaily in line with what our customers could afford. If the Texis product is more money then I'll have to figure it out using the webinator product.

Thanks for your help and time,

Mike Randolph

mike173 · Post by **mike173** » Wed Sep 17, 2003 6:19 pm

Hello Mark,

I wasn't able to find the license agreement on the site? As a software company ourselves we certainly can't violate any agreement. Our software sells for only $995.00 dollars and I'll have to look elsewhere for a solution if our customers would have to pay more than $700 (under a grand). I don't quite understand what the difference is? It's still just indexing a site and high percentage of all sites on the Internet are ecommerce sites when you boil it down to basics.

Our customers are value oriented, I have used your product for a number of years off and on... I think it's great! and I sincerely hope the lawyers don't spoil my ability to meet our customers needs at a price point they can afford.

Thanks for your feedback and assistance.

Mike Randolph

mike173 · Post by **mike173** » Wed Sep 17, 2003 6:52 pm

Hello John,

Found the addendum A:, I'm not an atty but it appears after some very carefull reading that what our customers need would be ok under the terms of the license agreement since were not doing any post processing with any outside software. Our product already has a built in search engine and this is for larger customers that want their entire site indexed (including store) so we'd also be ok under the 30% rule of number 4.

Please let me know if I'm off base on my understanding of the terms of the Addendum A:

Thank you!!
Mike Randolph

THUNDERSTONE SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT
ADDENDUM A (Applicable to all Webinator licenses)

This Addendum supplements the License Agreement between you and Thunderstone. It applies to all licenses for Thunderstone's Webinator software where Webinator has been purchased in absence of a full Texis license. The general purpose of the Webinator Licensed Program is to create searchable indices of textual materials which are predomniantly owned, controlled, or managed by the Licensee and are accessible via an Internet Web Server. During indexing Webinator will access documents via the HTTP or FTP protocol. After acquisition and indexing Webinator will directly provide a search interface to the index through an HTTP server. Licensee may use Webinator in a manner consistent with its general purpose and subject to the to the following limits of Acceptable Use:

1. Licensee may modify the Licensed Program's search interface to improve styling compatibility and usefulness with respect to the rest of Licensee's Web Server.

2. Licensee may add ancillary functionality via the provided Vortex programming environment to increase the efficacy of the Licensed Program with respect to the rest of Licensee's Web Server. Licensee may not proxy or post-process search results from the Licensed Program with any other software.

3. Licensee may not modify or add ancillary functionality that has the effect of increasing the scope of the Licensed Program beyond its intended general purpose.

4. The Licensed Program may not be used to index textual data referenced by or residing in any third party relational database owned, managed, or controlled by Licensee unless the sum of textual data from third party database amounts to no more than thirty percent of any index created by the Licensed Program.

5. The Licensed Program may not be altered or used in any manner that would enhance or supplant the capabilities of any third party database program or in any manner that would have otherwise required licensing of the complete Texis product.

6. The Licensed Program must serve as a supportive entity on Licensee's Web Site; it cannot serve as the primary function or purpose of Licensee's Web Site. With the exception of registered non-profit institions, the Licensed Program may only be used to collect or provide searchable indexes to data which is predomniantly owned, controlled, or managed by the Licensee.

7. Information collected by the Licensed Program may not be transferred to, or accessed by any other software package.

Post by **mark** » Thu Sep 18, 2003 11:18 am

So, it sounds like you're just wanting to enhance the result list slightly with a representative thumbnail for that page. That sounds reasonable.

BTW, with full Texis there would be no "splitting" of the data as each meta is available individually. If you look at the dowalk script you'll see this. Webinator just combines the non-default ones into one field.

mike173 · Post by **mike173** » Thu Sep 18, 2003 5:38 pm

Hello Mark,

Thanks for the update. I will continue to research this futher, and look forward to working with your product more indepth.

Thank you
Mike Randolph