How to maniupulate the search core results?

Question

I am working on putting together a search page and it is required that the search results display in a specific way. The search box is searching through a library on a separate page and bringing back results to the search page. By specific I mean I would like the results to display the same exact columns and format and info as seen in the library - but to pick out these "results" from this enormous library. I think this article get's at what I'm looking for:

http://www.mindfiresolutions.com/How-to-customize-the-search-results-of-a-search-core-result-web-part-in-SharePoint--1096.php

But the problem is this is not written for SP 2010. Anyway to translate the first step into SharePoint 2010? This is really important to me. I also don't really know how to code anything in SharePoint.. I have experience coding in C but have never dealt with C#. Another thing I noticed was that in the search core results options/edit menu there is a "Sample Data" section in the Miscellaneous tab that seems to correlate to the information grouped under every result. Does anyone know how to write//manipulate this?

Another thing I am searching to do is to change the hyperlink in the results to actually open the resulting file when it is clicked, rather than the default of the URL taking you to the location of the result.

Any advice and help is so very greatly appreciated! I just really need some help getting in the right direction! Thanks everyone!

Answer 1

The search results process in 2010 is pretty complicated, it get's easier in 2013. You have to work with XSL, so you should not need to write code. Here is an article I wrote on the process for 2010: http://www.ableblue.com/blog/archive/2011/09/30/take-control-of-search-xsl/