AngularJS server-side multi-column search - angularjs

Question

I am building an application in NodeJS and AngularJS.
I am building a multi-column search functionality where the user can type in search keywords into separate searchboxes (at the top of each column) and retrieve the results based on the column.
So far I have a single searchbox that searches all attributes at the same time.
How can I implement multiple individual searchboxes that will return results based on multiple attributes?
Note: I want to implement this on the server-side for performance reasons. (I know that I can simply use HTML attributes | filter:column1 | filter:column2 but want to avoid this technique if possible).
Here is the code I have so far. I am thinking that I need to pass in some sort of "searchBy" variable that is set on the view and then update the search method to search by multiple query/attribute pairs.
//Search service factory
//Initialize filtered items and get search results
function search(items, query) {
this.filteredItems = $filter('filter')(items, function (item) {
for(var attr in item) {
if (searchMatch(item[attr], query))
return true;
}
return false;
});
return this.filteredItems;
}
function searchMatch(haystack, needle) {
if (!needle) {
return true;
}
return haystack.toString().toLowerCase().indexOf(needle.toLowerCase()) !== -1;
};
//Controller
vm.filteredItems = vm.search(vm.unfilteredItems, vm.query);
//View
input(type='text', ng-model='vm.query', ng-change='vm.search(vm.unfilteredItems, vm.query)', placeholder='Search')

Answer 1

I was able to solve this by first creating an array of objects for each search box then repeating those boxes in the view with the ng-repeat attribute.
//Controller
var vm = this;
var vm.unfilteredItems; //data source query removed for brevity
//Initialize search inputs
vm.search_by_inputs = [
{search_column: 'id', search_query: ''},
{search_column: 'requester', search_query: ''},
{search_column: 'dataowner', search_query: ''}
];
function initSearch() {
vm.filtered_items = vm.search(vm.unfiltered_items, vm.search_by_inputs);
}
//View
input.input-large.search-query(type='text', value='{{search_by.search_query}}', ng-model='search_by.search_query' ng-change='vm.initSearch()', placeholder='Search')
The next step is to loop over the search_by_inputs object in the controller and create a new object with only the inputs that have search values entered into the searchboxes in the view. Then in the search method the built-in "filter" component iterates each item, and inside that loop each of the search terms is checked against that value with the column name that matches the property.
/*
* Create new array of objects with only elements that have search values to optimize loop inside filter
* #search_by_inputs array of objects each has a key search_column and a value search_query
*/
function optimizeSearchProperties(search_by_inputs) {
search_by_properties = [];
for (var i = 0, len = search_by_inputs.length; i < len; i++) {
//If this column input box has query text
if (search_by_inputs[i].search_query) {
search_by_properties.push(search_by_inputs[i]);
}
}
return search_by_properties;
}
/*
* #haystack search item
* #needle search term
*/
function searchMatch(haystack, needle) {
if (!needle) {
return true;
}
return haystack.toString().toLowerCase().indexOf(needle.toLowerCase()) !== -1;
}
/*
* Create filtered items object by filtering search results
* #items original array of objects returned by database query result
* #search_by_inputs array of objects each has a key search_column and a value search_query
*/
function search(items, search_by_inputs) {
var search_by_properties = optimizeSearchProperties(search_by_inputs);
//If there are no search properties input by requester then return all items
if (search_by_properties.length === 0) {
this.filtered_items = items;
return this.filtered_items;
}
this.filtered_items = $filter('filter')(items, function (item) {
var search_result = true;
//Loop over all search by input textboxes
for (var n = 0, len = search_by_properties.length; n < len; n++) {
//If there is no query text
if (!search_by_properties[n].search_query) {
//Continue to next element in array
continue;
//Else if element has a property that matches search input column name
} else if (item[search_by_properties[n].search_column]) {
if (!searchMatch(item[search_by_properties[n].search_column], search_by_properties[n].search_query)) {
search_result = false;
break;
}
}
}
return search_result;
});
return this.filtered_items;
}
I would be glad to have some feedback on this solution in terms of optimization, performance, technique, etc. Thanks!