Cross-Site Search

Search for a device across other measurement databases from your own site’s search box. Results link straight to the matching site with the device loaded.

Overview

When a visitor searches for a device you don’t have, modernGraphTool can show them who does. Below your own results, it lists matches from other public measurement databases, grouped by site and rig type.

This works on any host — squig.link is not required. Cross-site search reads a single prebuilt index document, so it costs one request no matter how many databases are listed.

The index comes from GraphAggregator, a community project that crawls known measurement databases and publishes their device lists as one JSON file. modernGraphTool ships with its official URLs built in, so there is nothing to set up.

Comma-separated queries

Typing hd 600, u12t asks a different question: which database has both of these? Only databases carrying a match for every term are listed, and each one shows all of its matching devices — so a visitor comparing two devices can find a site that measured them on the same rig instead of stitching two sites’ graphs together.

The i button next to the search field lists these tips in the UI, so visitors don’t have to guess the syntax.

A term is only applied once it reaches two characters, so results don’t churn while the visitor is still typing the second one. A trailing comma is ignored.

Your own site’s device list reads the same query, but unions the terms there — one device can’t be both, so it shows the devices matching either, ready to be loaded together.

Alternative spellings

The same model is often written differently from one database to the next — Lyro on one site, Lyrö on another. Separate the spellings with a double slash to match any of them: lyro // lyrö lists every database carrying either.

// binds tighter than the comma, so each comma-separated group is one device and its // alternatives are other names for it. lyro // lyrö, hd 600 lists the databases that carry the HD 600 and either spelling of the Lyro.

A single / is still part of the search term — plenty of device names contain one, such as 16/Cosmos or HD650/HD6XX, and none contain two.

Configuration

Configured in config.js:

CROSS_SITE_SEARCH: {
    ENABLED: true,
    INDEX_URLS: [],
}

Configuration Options

• ENABLED: Toggle cross-site search. Defaults to on.
• INDEX_URLS: Index documents to try, in order. Leave empty to use the official GraphAggregator index (with its GitHub Pages mirror as an automatic backup).

Self-hosting the index

If you’d rather not depend on a third-party origin, publish your own index document and point INDEX_URLS at it:

CROSS_SITE_SEARCH: {
    ENABLED: true,
    INDEX_URLS: [
        'https://example.com/my-index.json',
        'https://backup.example.com/my-index.json'
    ],
}

Each URL is tried in order and the first one that returns a valid document wins, so a mirror can be listed as a backup. The document must follow the GraphAggregator schema — see the GraphAggregator repository for the spec and for tooling that generates it.

Notes

• Databases hosted on the site the visitor is already on are filtered out of the results.
• Results are capped at 100 per query. When more match, a hint invites the visitor to refine the search.
• The index is fetched once, lazily, the first time a visitor types at least two characters — it costs nothing for visitors who never search.