Categories/Various user search results

[nickels]

I have one last issue for the day. Our new site is a portal, so there are a bunch of users that have restricted access to various parts of the website. I was looking at categories and it seems like they might work, but is there a way to use them with hidden fields?

Right now I have different searches which are set up page by page. If you are on a certain page, then your search results are determined by that page (each section has a different search form). But, I am finding we have some shared pages by a few "types" of users who should each get separate search results. Hope this makes sense.

So, on some restricted pages there is User A or B who can both be on it. And I want user A to get one result set, and user B to get another set of results. I can solve this by having a session variable set on login, checked on the page, and the search engine form switched based on the session variable. I was hoping for a cleaner technique or better way to get user based results.

Thanks for any help or advice!

[Ray]

You can specify a hidden input field in your search form to pre-select a category.

See the sub-section entitled "Defining a search form for a categories enabled website" under this FAQ:
Q. How do I put search forms on pages besides the search page?

This previous forum thread should also be of interest:
http://www.wrensoft.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1281

[alancece]

I did this same setup for a site I recently worked on, but instead of using hidden fields, I created separate search results pages with the category hard coded in so I didn't have to worry about security risks of someone changing the hidden input field value and getting results they should not have access to!

I guess I should also add that you obviously then have to authenticate the user on each particular search page to make sure they have access to that page.