Feature Proposal: SEARCH needs an alt parameter in case of zero results

Motivation

Often I want to display an alternative text if SEARCH does not return any results.

Description and Documentation

from VarSEARCH

zeroresults="off"	Suppress all output if there are no hits	zeroresults="on", displays: "Number of topics: 0"
nototal="on"	Do not show number of topics found	Show number

While the docco is totally vague about what happens when you combine the 2 :/

So I'm thinking that we can take the opportunity to turn zeroresults into a format field too

ie,

• zeroresults="$count results found" would work..
• zeroresults="off" would show nothing as now
• zeroresults="on" would show the total when = 0 independently of =nototal

what this means, is that zeroresults over-rides the nototal and nonoise options - as happes with the other parameters

(wow more docco and tests needed for the combinations)

Examples

Impact

Implementation

-- Contributors: ArthurClemens - 05 Feb 2009

Discussion

I agree. I added a similar idea to Tasks.Item883 the other week:

from VarSEARCH

zeroresults="off"	Suppress all output if there are no hits	zeroresults="on", displays: "Number of topics: 0"
nototal="on"	Do not show number of topics found	Show number

While the docco is totally vague about what happens when you combine the 2 :/

So I'm thinking that we can take the opportunity to turn zeroresults into a format field too

ie,

• zeroresults="$count results found" would work..
• zeroresults="off" would show nothing as now
• zeroresults="on" would show the total when = 0 independently of =nototal

(basically, it would be better if zeroresults could be used to optionally over-ride nonoise when otherwise you just get a blank page.)

-- SvenDowideit - 05 Feb 2009

updating and adding Arthur & me as dev's - in case we want to do this quickly for the release.

-- SvenDowideit - 06 Mar 2010

Fine with me. I support the "zeroresults as format" solution.

-- ArthurClemens - 06 Mar 2010

Sounds good to me.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 09 Mar 2010

+1 from me. I needed this just 2 days ago. 14-day period expires the 20th.

-- KennethLavrsen - 11 Mar 2010

Accepted

-- KennethLavrsen - 22 Mar 2010

done

-- SvenDowideit - 29 Mar 2010