Using Autocomplete in a Watson Explorer Engine Display

The following general rules may prove valuable when using or testing the autocomplete feature:

  • When used in the Watson™ Explorer Engine display, autocomplete can use the wildcard (*) character. When using the wildcard character, it cannot be used as the start of a word. For example; the strings s*, s*d, and s*d h* would all match the phrase sid halley and can be used to return autocomplete suggestions, but the string *d cannot.
    Note: The wildchar character (?) is not supported.
  • If a space or any punctuation is used to begin a query, autocomplete will automatically list the suggestions with the highest count attributes. This can be useful when testing the feature, or to identify the highest ranking results without creating a spelling dictionary.
  • Pressing the up arrow when at the top of the list or the Esc key will close the autocomplete window. Continuing to type in the search box will reopen the autocomplete window with any new matches that are available.
  • The autocomplete window will not open if there are no suggestions that match what has been typed into the search box.

The following metadata contents are automatically used to enhance autocomplete suggestions:

  • url - Turns the suggestion into a link to that URL instead of going to the search results for that phrase.
  • image - Hotlinks the image url in an <img> to the left of the autocomplete suggestion.
  • description - Displays the content of the description below the autocomplete suggestion.
Note: If multiple instances of a single type (url, image, description) of metadata content are stored with a phrase, only the first metadata instance of that type is used in the standard Watson Explorer Engine display.

Changing which metadata contents are used to enhance autocomplete suggestions is an advanced feature, which is discussed in the following section.