Search

Important

The Search API is currently in Early Availability status. For more information, see Product lifecycle phases.

With AppDirect Search, marketplace owners (merchants) can use APIs to consolidate information into a single database on the AppDirect platform. APIs are then used to query the database, and merchants present the information that is returned on their platforms, with front-end designs that they develop.

Search supports two forms of query:

• Search content—Searches the database for items that match user-entered search terms, and returns results in order of relevance, like a standard search engine.

• Feed resources—Searches the database for activity of the user's connected applications, and returns results in order of those most recently updated, like an event timeline.

Both types of query return only those resources that the user has access to, as determined by the permissions set on each resource.

Both types of query can also apply filters to the results that are returned. These filters can limit results to those that meet user-specified criteria on the resource fields.

How merchants can use Search

Merchants can use the APIs and queries to do the following:

• publish data from one or more sources to Search

• use the search query to allow users on the merchants' platforms to do keyword searches on the aggregated data, and view the results

• use the feeds query to retrieve feeds of current information with the most recently updated first, display feeds for users on the merchant's platforms, and provide users with filters to narrow the feed content

An example of how merchants can use the search and feeds APIs follows. For this example, it is assumed that the merchant is also the vendor.

An merchant sells a customer subscriptions to backup and information security monitoring products.

Publish content to Search

As the vendor of the software, the merchant uses the API to publish data from both products, to Search on the AppDirect platform.

The merchant updates the data with events as they occur, such as when large documents are saved, and logins are made from unexpected locations.

Search aggregated data

With the search API, the merchant offers users the option to do keyword searches on the aggregated data from the merchant's platform. The user can search for keyword phrase "security risk assessment" and documents and access records containing it appear.

Display feeds

The merchant uses the feeds API to query the aggregated data for the current information, and display it sorted by the most recently updated first, such as when large files were saved or logins are made from unexpected locations. They create filters that users can use to narrow the feed to the events that are most important to them, such as only unauthorized access attempts.

Search data structure and terminology

The following table displays how data is structured in the Search repository.

Search structure and examples

Level	Description	Example(s)
Repository	A collection of data submitted to Search	A merchant submits data related to its users' backup subscriptions, to the AppDirect Search repository. The merchant also submits data related to its users' information security monitoring subscriptions, to the Search repository.
Resource	A bucket of related data submitted by a vendor and associated with one or more app users. When a user and product are connected to Search, the resources associated with the user are visible to them in query results by default. When a user is deleted from a resource, the user's resource visibility is removed (the resource does not appear in search results for the user).	Example 1: A document is stored with access permissions in associated fields. For example: read or read only. A snippet of the document is visible in search results for all app users associated with it. Example 2: The merchant sends an event that an access attempt was made from an unexpected location.
Content	Information associated with a resource, provided through a URL. For example: images, emails, or PDFs. Optionally, it can be submitted as structured search content with, for example, the text contained in the image so that when users search for the text, the image is returned.	A URL to a PDF of a document, and the text contained in the PDF.

Search API endpoints

The APIs that support the Search feature appear in the following table.

Search APIs

Endpoint/Query name	Description	API Type
Create user connections	Enable (connect) Search for a customer and subscription	REST
Publish event content	Share data with the Search feature	REST
Search content	Query a dataset for data related to a customer’s connected subscriptions	REST
feedResources	Retrieve resources and their associated attributes, sorted by most recently updated	GraphQL
Disconnect user accounts	Disable (disconnect) Search from a customer and subscription	REST

Set up Search

To set up Search, see the Getting started with Search.