Creating Managed Properties in the SharePoint Advanced Search Page Using C#

Question

I am working on Advanced Search customization. Advanced Search page has a property picker that can be populated with managed properties and I can expose managed properties with SharePoint interfaces. However, I need to create managed property for Advanced Search Page using C#. How can I programmatically create managed properties and add them into the Advanced Search Properties? Do you have any idea about that?

Thank you.

Answer 1

I solved my problem, Firstly, I created managed property with its mapping. You can access the solution from this link.

        public void CreateManagedProperty()
    {
        // Get the default service context
        SPServiceContext context = SPServiceContext.GetContext(SPServiceApplicationProxyGroup.Default, SPSiteSubscriptionIdentifier.Default);// Get the search service application proxy
        var searchProxy = context.GetDefaultProxy(typeof(SearchServiceApplicationProxy)) as SearchServiceApplicationProxy;

        // Get the search service application info object so we can find the Id of our Search Service App
        if (searchProxy != null)
        {
            SearchServiceApplicationInfo ssai = searchProxy.GetSearchServiceApplicationInfo();

            // Get the application itself
            var application = SearchService.Service.SearchApplications.GetValue<SearchServiceApplication>(ssai.SearchServiceApplicationId);

            // Get the schema of our Search Service Application
            var schema = new Schema(application);

            // Get all the managed properties
            ManagedPropertyCollection properties = schema.AllManagedProperties;

            // Add a new property
            ManagedProperty myProperty = properties.Create(Constants.ManagedPropertyName, ManagedDataType.Text);
            myProperty.EnabledForScoping = true;

            // Get the current mappings
            MappingCollection mappings = myProperty.GetMappings();

            // Add a new mapping to a previously crawled field
            var myMapping = new Mapping(
                new Guid(Constants.CrawledPropertyGuid), Constants.CrawledPropertyName, 31, myProperty.PID);

            // Add the mapping
            mappings.Add(myMapping);

            // Update the collection of mappings
            myProperty.SetMappings(mappings);

            // Write the changes back
            myProperty.Update();
        }
    }

And then managed property was added to Advanced search Property;

        public void AddAdvancedSearchProperty()
    {
        string sourcefile =
            string.Format(
                "{0}\\{1}", SPUtility.GetGenericSetupPath("TEMPLATE\\ADMIN\\ManagedProperties"), "NewAdvancedSearchProperty.xml");
        // Load the xml file into XmlDocument object.
        var xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
        try
        {
            xmlDoc.Load(sourcefile);
        }
        catch (XmlException e)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
        }

        // Now create StringWriter object to get data from xml document.
        var sw = new StringWriter();
        var xw = new XmlTextWriter(sw);
        xmlDoc.WriteTo(xw);
        string newXmlString = sw.ToString();

        using (var sc = new SPSite("YOUR SITE"))
        {
            using (SPWeb web = sc.OpenWeb("searchcentre"))
            {
                SPLimitedWebPartManager mgr = web.GetLimitedWebPartManager("pages/advanced.aspx", PersonalizationScope.Shared);
                foreach (var wp in mgr.WebParts)
                {
                    if (wp is AdvancedSearchBox)
                    {
                        var asb = wp as AdvancedSearchBox;
                        asb.Properties = newXmlString;
                        mgr.SaveChanges(asb);
                    }
                }

                mgr.Web.Dispose();
            }
        }
    }

Note: Don't Forget!! Start Full crawl after creating new managed property.