Docs only change: finish documentation of Android Quick Search Box related information in SearchManager.
Includes:
- an overview section on including search suggestions in quick search box
- additional table of searchable metadata attributes related to quick search box
- additional column descriptions that we've added for quick search box.
- description of how to expose your content provider's search suggestions to
the search infrastructure if you have permissions guarding your content provider.
diff --git a/core/java/android/app/SearchManager.java b/core/java/android/app/SearchManager.java
index 7ad6423..97d46f8 100644
--- a/core/java/android/app/SearchManager.java
+++ b/core/java/android/app/SearchManager.java
@@ -369,7 +369,26 @@
* forget to decode it. (See {@link android.net.Uri#getPathSegments} and
* {@link android.net.Uri#getLastPathSegment} for helpful utilities you can use here.)</li>
* </ul>
- *
+ *
+ * <p><b>Providing access to Content Providers that require permissions.</b> If your content
+ * provider declares an android:readPermission in your application's manifest, you must provide
+ * access to the search infrastructure to the search suggestion path by including a path-permission
+ * that grants android:readPermission access to "android.permission.GLOBAL_SEARCH". Granting access
+ * explicitly to the search infrastructure ensures it will be able to access the search suggestions
+ * without needing to know ahead of time any other details of the permissions protecting your
+ * provider. Content providers that require no permissions are already available to the search
+ * infrastructure. Here is an example of a provider that protects access to it with permissions,
+ * and provides read access to the search infrastructure to the path that it expects to receive the
+ * suggestion query on:
+ * <pre class="prettyprint">
+ * <provider android:name="MyProvider" android:authorities="myprovider"
+ * android:readPermission="android.permission.READ_MY_DATA"
+ * android:writePermission="android.permission.WRITE_MY_DATA">
+ * <path-permission android:path="/search_suggest_query"
+ * android:readPermission="android.permission.GLOBAL_SEARCH" />
+ * </provider>
+ * </pre>
+ *
* <p><b>Handling empty queries.</b> Your application should handle the "empty query"
* (no user text entered) case properly, and generate useful suggestions in this case. There are a
* number of ways to do this; Two are outlined here:
@@ -377,7 +396,7 @@
* unfiltered. (example: People)</li>
* <li>For a query search, you could simply present the most recent queries. This allows the user
* to quickly repeat a recent search.</li></ul>
- *
+ *
* <p><b>The Format of Individual Suggestions.</b> Your suggestions are communicated back to the
* Search Manager by way of a {@link android.database.Cursor Cursor}. The Search Manager will
* usually pass a null Projection, which means that your provider can simply return all appropriate
@@ -453,13 +472,42 @@
* <td align="center">No</td>
* </tr>
*
+ * <tr><th>{@link #SUGGEST_COLUMN_INTENT_EXTRA_DATA}</th>
+ * <td>If this column exists <i>and</i> this element exists at a given row, this is the
+ * data that will be used when forming the suggestion's intent. If not provided,
+ * the Intent's extra data field will be null. This column allows suggestions to
+ * provide additional arbitrary data which will be included as an extra under the
+ * key {@link #EXTRA_DATA_KEY}.</td>
+ * <td align="center">No.</td>
+ * </tr>
+ *
* <tr><th>{@link #SUGGEST_COLUMN_QUERY}</th>
* <td>If this column exists <i>and</i> this element exists at the given row, this is the
* data that will be used when forming the suggestion's query.</td>
* <td align="center">Required if suggestion's action is
* {@link android.content.Intent#ACTION_SEARCH ACTION_SEARCH}, optional otherwise.</td>
* </tr>
- *
+ *
+ * <tr><th>{@link #SUGGEST_COLUMN_SHORTCUT_ID}</th>
+ * <td>This column is used to indicate whether a search suggestion should be stored as a
+ * shortcut, and whether it should be validated. Shortcuts are usually formed when the
+ * user clicks a suggestion from Quick Search Box. If missing, the result will be
+ * stored as a shortcut and never refreshed. If set to
+ * {@link #SUGGEST_NEVER_MAKE_SHORTCUT}, the result will not be stored as a shortcut.
+ * Otherwise, the shortcut id will be used to check back for for an up to date
+ * suggestion using {@link #SUGGEST_URI_PATH_SHORTCUT}. Read more about shortcut
+ * refreshing in the section about
+ * <a href="#ExposingSearchSuggestionsToQuickSearchBox">exposing search suggestions to
+ * Quick Search Box</a>.</td>
+ * <td align="center">No. Only applicable to sources included in Quick Search Box.</td>
+ * </tr>
+ *
+ * <tr><th>{@link #SUGGEST_COLUMN_SPINNER_WHILE_REFRESHING}</th>
+ * <td>This column is used to specify that a spinner should be shown in lieu of an icon2
+ * while the shortcut of this suggestion is being refreshed.</td>
+ * <td align="center">No. Only applicable to sources included in Quick Search Box.</td>
+ * </tr>
+ *
* <tr><th><i>Other Columns</i></th>
* <td>Finally, if you have defined any <a href="#ActionKeys">Action Keys</a> and you wish
* for them to have suggestion-specific definitions, you'll need to define one
@@ -536,7 +584,55 @@
* <a name="ExposingSearchSuggestionsToQuickSearchBox"></a>
* <h3>Exposing Search Suggestions to Quick Search Box</h3>
*
- * <p>
+ * <p>Once your application is setup to provide search suggestions, making them available to the
+ * globally accessable Quick Search Box is as easy as setting android:includeInGlobalSearch to
+ * "true" in your searchable metadata file. Beyond that, here are some more details of how
+ * suggestions interact with Quick Search Box, and optional ways that you may customize suggestions
+ * for your application.
+ *
+ * <p><b>Source Ranking:</b> Once your application's search results are made available to Quick
+ * Search Box, how they surface to the user for a particular query will depend on how many
+ * other apps have results for that query, and how often the user has clicked on your results
+ * compared to the other apps'. The apps with the best track record within Quick Search
+ * Box will get queried earlier and have a better chance of showing their results in the top few
+ * slots. If there are more results than can be displayed to the user within a screen or two, the
+ * results may spill into a "more results" section that groups the remaining results by
+ * source. The newest apps with little usage information are given middle of the road positioning
+ * until enough usage information is available to rank it as usual. The exact formula for ranking
+ * the results is not set in stone, but suffice it is to say that providing quality results will
+ * increase the likelihood that your app's suggestions are provided in a prominent position, and
+ * apps that provide lower quality suggestions will be more likely to be pushed into the spillover
+ * area.
+ *
+ * <p><b>Search Settings:</b> Each app that is available to Quick Search Box has an entry in the
+ * system settings where the user can enable or disable the inclusion of its results. Below the
+ * name of the application, each application may provide a brief description of what kind of
+ * information will be made available via a search settings description string pointed to by the
+ * android:searchSettingsDescription attribute in the searchable metadata.
+ *
+ * <p><b>Shortcuts:</b> Suggestions that are clicked on by the user are automatically made into
+ * shortcuts, or, copied so they can quickly be displayed to the user before querying any of
+ * the sources. Thereafter, the shortcutted suggestion will be displayed for the query that yielded
+ * the suggestion and for any prefixes of that query. When multiple shortcuts are made available
+ * for a given query, they are ranked based on recency and the number of clicks they have received.
+ * You can control how your suggestions are made into shortcuts, and whether they are refreshed,
+ * using the {@link #SUGGEST_COLUMN_SHORTCUT_ID} column:
+ * <ul><li>Suggestions that do not include a shortcut id column will be made into shortcuts and
+ * never refreshed. This makes sense for suggestions that refer to data that will never be changed
+ * or removed.</li>
+ * <li>Suggestions that include a shortcut id will be re-queried for a fresh version of the
+ * suggestion each time the shortcut is displayed. The shortcut will be quickly displayed with
+ * whatever data was most recently available until the refresh query returns, after which the
+ * suggestion will be dynamically refreshed with the up to date information. The shortcut refresh
+ * query will be sent to your suggestion provider with a uri of {@link #SUGGEST_URI_PATH_SHORTCUT}.
+ * The result should contain one suggestion using the same columns as the suggestion query, or be
+ * empty, indicating that the shortcut is no longer valid. Shortcut ids make sense when referring
+ * to data that may change over time, such as a contact's presence status. If a suggestion refers
+ * to data that could take longer to refresh, such as a network based refresh of a stock quote, you
+ * may include {@link #SUGGEST_COLUMN_SPINNER_WHILE_REFRESHING} to show a progress spinner for the
+ * right hand icon until the refresh is complete.</li>
+ * <li>Finally, to prevent a suggestion from being copied into a shortcut, you may provide a
+ * shortcut id with a value of {@link #SUGGEST_NEVER_MAKE_SHORTCUT}.</li></ul>
*
* <a name="ActionKeys"></a>
* <h3>Action Keys</h3>
@@ -673,7 +769,7 @@
* entered.</td>
* <td align="center">No</td>
* </tr>
- *
+ *
* <tr><th>android:searchButtonText</th>
* <td>If provided, this text will replace the default text in the "Search" button.</td>
* <td align="center">No</td>
@@ -853,7 +949,48 @@
*
* </tbody>
* </table>
- *
+ *
+ * <p>Elements of search metadata that configure search suggestions being available to Quick Search
+ * Box:
+ * <table border="2" width="85%" align="center" frame="hsides" rules="rows">
+ *
+ * <thead>
+ * <tr><th>Attribute</th> <th>Description</th> <th>Required?</th></tr>
+ * </thead>
+ *
+ * <tr><th>android:includeInGlobalSearch</th>
+ * <td>If true, indicates the search suggestions provided by your application should be
+ * included in the globally accessible Quick Search Box. The attributes below are only
+ * applicable if this is set to true.</td>
+ * <td align="center">Yes</td>
+ * </tr>
+ *
+ * <tr><th>android:searchSettingsDescription</th>
+ * <td>If provided, provides a brief description of the search suggestions that are provided
+ * by your application to Quick Search Box, and will be displayed in the search settings
+ * entry for your application.</td>
+ * <td align="center">No</td>
+ * </tr>
+ *
+ * <tr><th>android:queryAfterZeroResults</th>
+ * <td>Indicates whether a source should be invoked for supersets of queries it has
+ * returned zero results for in the past. For example, if a source returned zero
+ * results for "bo", it would be ignored for "bob". If set to false, this source
+ * will only be ignored for a single session; the next time the search dialog is
+ * invoked, all sources will be queried. The default value is false.</td>
+ * <td align="center">No</td>
+ * </tr>
+ *
+ * <tr><th>android:searchSuggestThreshold</th>
+ * <td>Indicates the minimum number of characters needed to trigger a source from Quick
+ * Search Box. Only guarantees that a source will not be queried for anything shorter
+ * than the threshold. The default value is 0.</td>
+ * <td align="center">No</td>
+ * </tr>
+ *
+ * </tbody>
+ * </table>
+ *
* <p><b>Additional metadata for search action keys.</b> For each action key that you would like to
* define, you'll need to add an additional element defining that key, and using the attributes
* discussed in <a href="#ActionKeys">Action Keys</a>. A simple example is shown here:
@@ -1376,10 +1513,10 @@
/**
* Column name for suggestions cursor. <i>Optional.</i> This column is used to indicate whether
- * a search suggestion should be stored as a shortcut, and whether it should be validated. If
+ * a search suggestion should be stored as a shortcut, and whether it should be refreshed. If
* missing, the result will be stored as a shortcut and never validated. If set to
* {@link #SUGGEST_NEVER_MAKE_SHORTCUT}, the result will not be stored as a shortcut.
- * Otherwise, the shortcut id will be used to check back for validation via
+ * Otherwise, the shortcut id will be used to check back for an up to date suggestion using
* {@link #SUGGEST_URI_PATH_SHORTCUT}.
*/
public final static String SUGGEST_COLUMN_SHORTCUT_ID = "suggest_shortcut_id";
