Filter webpart on the Search Page

Question

Basically, I am Sharepoint administrator and my bad time have to create/introduce a Filter webpart on the search page

Expectations are

1. I have a custom List with 10+ columns (like CustomerID, Country, TypeofTrans, Transaction...)
2. In the search page, I should introduce a new Filter webpart with the Fields like CustomerID, Country & TypeofTrans. CustomerID should be populated automatically and Country & TypeofTrans must be populated based on the selection of the CustomerID.
3. Upon the selection or on the button click, the search core result webpart should so the corresponding results also Filter webpart should persist its selection.

Do we have any such a free webparts to download? If not, suggest me the easiest way.

Answer 1

I think the feature you are looking for is "faceted search" or "search refiners". For SharePoint 2007 there is a project on codeplex (http://facetedsearch.codeplex.com/). An equivalent feature exists out-of-the-box in the Standard version of SharePoint Server 2010. You will need to configure the Refinement Panel in your search results page.

Without knowing your precise requirements, I am not sure if this will work the way you want it without customization. You should set this up and test it to see whether you need to create a custom derived RefinementWebPart. You may also need customisation if you need to persist the state of the search page throughout a user's session. Finally, there is a limit to the depth of search results used (50 by default) which might be a limitation. You would need to go to FAST Search to remove this limit.

Answer 2

You could also do this with a Data View Web Part (or several). I've done similar things many times. The plus for this approach is that there is no need to deploy code to the server.

Answer 3

i did not want to use OM to create such a filtet webpart, so have used johnson's SPAPIs to complete the task and it works perfectly.