Paperback Digital's search engine

Sparrow · 11-25-2007, 06:12 AM

Using the Search facility at Paperback Digital:

"kevin anderson" - 0 hits
"kevin j anderson" - 0 hits
"kevin j. anderson" - 2 pages of hits

This seems unduly fussy

It could be a struggle finding stuff (or is it me?).

DanT · 11-25-2007, 11:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Using the Search facility at Paperback Digital:

"kevin anderson" - 0 hits
"kevin j anderson" - 0 hits
"kevin j. anderson" - 2 pages of hits

This seems unduly fussy

It could be a struggle finding stuff (or is it me?).

Yes Paperback Digital has a pretty weak/bad/specific search engine. Sometime I just google with

site:paperbackdigital.com kevin anderson

It give better result. Then you can click on any book --then on the author name, on the ebook detailed page, to get all the books by that author.

Sparrow · 11-25-2007, 12:02 PM

Great tip - thanks!

ashalan · 11-25-2007, 02:10 PM

Just gave it a shot assuming there is some sql database sitting in the background and used the sql wildcard character '%' ... it works.

For instance: 'kevin%anderson' will yield the expected 2 pages of search results.

Btw, being a developer of database driven web applications myself, seeing this work gave me the shivers.

Sparrow · 11-25-2007, 02:52 PM

Thanks, I'd tried * as a wildcard (without success) but not %

If you enter "kev%j", that works too - "j" gets expanded even though there is no "%" after it - is that usual for sql?

ashalan · 11-25-2007, 03:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparrow

If you enter "kev%j", that works too - "j" gets expanded even though there is no "%" after it - is that usual for sql?

No, it is not. Yet I have seen a lot of developers having their code always add a % at the end of any text search. Seems like PBD's developers did just that

Sparrow · 11-26-2007, 10:32 AM

Looks like they've stopped the wildcard searches - what worked yesterday isn't working today

But they haven't made any actual improvements to the Search facility to compensate.
Oh well, at least we have the Google method

ashalan · 11-26-2007, 11:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Looks like they've stopped the wildcard searches - what worked yesterday isn't working today

But they haven't made any actual improvements to the Search facility to compensate.
Oh well, at least we have the Google method

Who knows, maybe they read this very post. What I implied with my statement that things like this 'make me shiver' is that allowing the % wildcard very often is an indicator for code that is not warded against sql injection. I actually sent them a mail indicating as much but haven't gotten an answer yet.

11-25-2007, 06:12 AM	#1
Sparrow Wizard Posts: 4,395 Karma: 1358132 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: UK Device: Palm TX, CyBook Gen3	Paperback Digital's search engine Using the Search facility at Paperback Digital: "kevin anderson" - 0 hits "kevin j anderson" - 0 hits "kevin j. anderson" - 2 pages of hits This seems unduly fussy It could be a struggle finding stuff (or is it me?).

11-25-2007, 02:10 PM	#4
ashalan Connoisseur Posts: 59 Karma: 405 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Berne, Switzerland Device: Cybook Gen3	Just gave it a shot assuming there is some sql database sitting in the background and used the sql wildcard character '%' ... it works. For instance: 'kevin%anderson' will yield the expected 2 pages of search results. Btw, being a developer of database driven web applications myself, seeing this work gave me the shivers. Last edited by ashalan; 11-25-2007 at 02:13 PM.

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11-25-2007, 12:02 PM	#3
Sparrow Wizard Posts: 4,395 Karma: 1358132 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: UK Device: Palm TX, CyBook Gen3	Great tip - thanks!

11-25-2007, 02:52 PM	#5
Sparrow Wizard Posts: 4,395 Karma: 1358132 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: UK Device: Palm TX, CyBook Gen3	Thanks, I'd tried * as a wildcard (without success) but not % If you enter "kev%j", that works too - "j" gets expanded even though there is no "%" after it - is that usual for sql?

11-26-2007, 10:32 AM	#7
Sparrow Wizard Posts: 4,395 Karma: 1358132 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: UK Device: Palm TX, CyBook Gen3	Looks like they've stopped the wildcard searches - what worked yesterday isn't working today But they haven't made any actual improvements to the Search facility to compensate. Oh well, at least we have the Google method

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