This is the source code to the American Peony Society website's registry search feature. This is the result of some volunteering effort on my part to improve upon the previous version. I've decided to open source it to encourage contributions from others.
Build requires Node.JS and npm to be installed. Dependencies can be
installed with npm install, then build can be invoked with npm run gulp rel.
A development server can be started with npm run gulp dev, which will
enable browsersync and hot reloads.
Some of the dependencies used here are:
- Knockout.JS: databinding
- JSX-Dom: React-like html literals
- Typescript: Type-checking compiler
- ESBuild: Dependency bundling
- Gulp: Build automation
- BrowserSync: Development server
Some of the design is inherited from the version preceding my work, and I tried to change as little as possible so that this could be incorporated without extensive changes. I might have done it a little differently, but I'm not unhappy with the current state.
The registry data is compiled into a JSON file (all of it) and downloaded to the client, which must parse it, perform any normalization and indexing on-the-fly, and execute any search client-side. This takes advantage of a CDN and the load on the server (which the APS must pay for) is minimal. The database isn't very large -- weighing in just under a megabyte compressed and containing about 7,500 records.
My implementation will fetch the registry, perform normalization, and search by scanning each record. As much as possible, it carries operations out asynchronously in smaller batches. Search employs a quiescence timer to accommodate further input (so as to not spin the thread while the user is typing) and can cancel in-progress searches. Results are scored such that exact matches > prefix matches > partial matches; consecutive search terms get a bonus; and different fields carry different weights. Diacritics are normalized away allowing the mostly-American audience a break from trickier characters.
This work is licensed under AGPLv3, though the APS is granted more permissive terms.