A derivative port of the Quicksilver algorithm scoreForAbbreviation
John Nunemaker developed a jQuery plugin for Live Search with Quicksilver Style. As the user constructs a search query, each element of a local or Ajax remote data set receives a score in relation to the query text. The jQuery plugin then sorts and filters the results to narrow down the displayed set of items.
John Resig soon refactored the Live Search plugin. As a building block for live search, Cinnabar simply provides a scoring function that gives preference to phrases having words that begin with the query text.
The structure of the cinnabar object draws directly from the functional inheritance pattern promoted by Douglas Crockford in Chapter 5 of JavaScript: The Good Parts.
Cinnabar augments the String type, where the string is an element of the data set being searched.
Given queryText, the score method returns a number ranging from 0.0 to 1.0.
The optional precision parameter controls the number of digits of precision, which default to 4.
johann = 'Bach, Concerto No. 4 in A, BWV 1055'
ludwig = 'Beethoven, Concerto No. 4 for Piano & Orchestra, Op. 58'
johann.score('Ba') -> 0.9057
ludwig.score('Ba') -> 0.4736
johann.score('Bac') -> 0.9086
ludwig.score('Bac') -> 0.3919
johann.score('Beet') -> 0
ludwig.score('Beet') -> 0.9073
johann.score('Concerto') -> 0.9186
johann.score('oncerto') -> 0.7643
- Cinnabar is case sensitive. For case insensitive scoring, preprocess the data set and query text with
string.toLowerCase().
Cinnabar came into existence as part of a Ruby on Rails application. Its Jasmine specs are written in CoffeeScript and served by a mini-Rails app (see config.ru). Start the test server manually with bundle exec rackup -p 3000 and visit http://localhost:3000/jasmine to verify that it works. More info about the test setup may be found at the guard-jasmine GitHub page.
Cinnabar provides the source for Mercury (Quicksilver).
Cinnabar was extracted from Realized, an investment portfolio management application under development by New Forge Technologies.