Witzend Search Library SDK

The Witzend Search Library™ component SDK is a toolkit of fast file searching functions, offering grep-like “find in files” capabilities for Windows and the Web. Drop the Search Library component into your project and instantly your program becomes a file search powerhouse, able to quickly find text strings in disk files and documents such as PDF, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, and HTML. Available as both a fast dynamic link library and small ActiveX control.

"If you're looking for a search toolkit that's fast, powerful, and reasonably priced, I think you'll like this one."

-- Visual Studio Magazine, December 2001

Overview

The Witzend Search Library is “canned software” that you can add to your programming project in just minutes. Instantly your Win32 applications and Web pages acquire sophisticated search capabilities:

• File searching
• Text retrieval
• Data mining
• Search and replace
• Document search: ZIP, PDF, Word, WordPerfect, HTML, etc.
• Scan intranet, desktop, or website
• And much more...

Built for high speed and small size, the Search Library component provides a simple and elegant API interface with which to work. A wealth of example code provided with the Search Library SDK demonstrates how to use the component whether you work in C++, C#, Visual Basic, VBA, HTML, Java, VBScript, or PowerBuilder.

Features

• Search buffers. Search backward or forward through buffers of any size, searching for ANSI, double-byte, or Unicode strings. Set search options such as case-sensitivity (find Abc but not abc) and whole-word searching (find any but not anywhere). The Search Library can even find misspelled words through its fuzzy-search feature.
  


• Search files. Specify search parameters, then call a single function. The Search Library does all the work. Boolean and proximity operators AND, OR, NOT, and NEAR let your application search for up to 256 strings at once. Date and size filters can narrow searches to, say, only those files dated within the last month between 10K and 50K in size; other filters limit searches to specific file types.

The Search Library can create its own thread on which to conduct searches, giving your program freedom to conduct other tasks while the search is underway. It can even automatically replace text in files. A host of features and search options ensures your program retains tight control over the entire search process. 

• Search documents and ZIP archives. The Search Library quickly scans document files in popular formats such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, WordPerfect, and Adobe Acrobat PDF. It can also reach into ZIP files and search archived contents. You can experience these features yourself by downloading the demonstration program described in the next section.
  


•  DLL or ActiveX control -- your choice. For Win32 applications, it doesn’t get any faster than the Search Library’s small and quick dynamic link library. Or if you prefer, choose the Library’s ActiveX control, which accommodates a wide variety of programming scenarios:
   
  • .NET programming
  • Normal Win32 applications
  • Scripted Web and ASP pages (VBScript, JavaScript, etc)
  • Distributed client-server applications communicating across a network
    
    


• Efficient and simple programming interface. The Search Library handles all search operations through only eight exported functions, and generally an application requires the services of only three functions. For example, to search disk files a program calls only InitFileSearch, SearchFile, and CloseFileSearch.
  


• No indexing. Some search products must first index the files they are about to search, but not the Witzend Search Library. The Search Library does not index files before searching them -- it doesn’t need to because it’s so fast. The Library shines when searching files that are frequently updated, because no time is wasted in continually building a new search index.
  


• Extensive documentation and example code. The Search Library SDK includes complete on-line documentation and lots of example source code. Sample projects show clearly how to use the Search Library whether you work with C++, Visual Basic, MS Access, VBScript, or Java.

Examples include a version of the WitzSrch demonstration program, a powerful grep-like utility. Written in C++ using MFC, the WitzSrch program (described in the next section) shows how an application can query for search parameters through a tabbed dialog. Another interesting project demonstrates how to add the Search Library to a Web page using VBScript or JavaScript. All example projects are well-documented and complete.