How to create a searchable list of 'approved installers'

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I need to create a list of ‘approved installers’ which is searchable by company name. The resulting search should show company name and contact details, preferable in a simple card / box

Originally, when the list was small, I simply set up A-Z lists using Doobox Hunter 3 stack (which is one of several filter stacks out there). So, customers looking to see if ‘Billy’s Installations Ltd’ was on the approved installer list, could select ‘B’ and look down the list for Billy. You can see this in action here: https://gate-safe.org/find-installers/Installers-a-z/ - searching under ‘Y’ is fine as there are only 3 installers. Search under ‘A’ however and it’s rather different!

However, the list is now around 800 installers and this method is no longer a good experience as the lists are too long.

I have tried GSheet from @weavium and this works very well up to around 400 records. However much beyond this number, inputting a request becomes slow and unresponsive. It’s a real shame because the Spreadsheet solution is excellent for direct client maintenance, and the output results can be fully customised. You can try a rough demo I set up here: https://kikkdevelopment.co.uk/gatesafe/ - try searching for Gate Medic for example.

So - any other ideas?

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You could use Poster Stack therefore.

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Poster 2 for sure.

This is pretty much what you are talking about, its built entirely with P2.

https://www.guidebookspain.com/local/

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If you like the idea of using a spreadsheet, what about Grid Iron from Chillidog? @barchard would know if it’ll support that many entries.

Rob

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GridIron shouldn’t have any issue with 400. It can handle it without breaking a sweat. There is an Ajax mode to make the request in the background of the page and cache it on the server.

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Thanks for this - been aware of Poster for ages but not purchased. Couple of questions:

  1. I assume the ‘See Details’ link isn’t necessary - I would not need this
  2. Can the page start off empty and just show a search result?
  3. Does the page have to reload for search result? Not too much of an issue as this page won’t need a banner image but when you do have a banner, the page loads at the top again
  4. How many items would it comfortably support?

Thanks

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Probably not for this application as the client would like the results displayed in some type of card layout. I think it would handle the volume - the demo has a 1000 records if I remember

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It is not necessary.

Not really.

Yes.

I did several tests, lets say 1.000 markdown files are rendering in 0.5 - 1 second :slight_smile:

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This is the link to open the Poster Item, and I’d assume if you didn’t want to have any additional details, you just wouldn’t create a Poster Item template or add the “read more” link to the list template. I’ve never done that, but assume Poster will still work fine. @instacks can confirm.

Erm… I’m guessing that would be easy enough to do with a bit of lateral thinking, but where would the search term to give the search result come from on page load?

Yes, the page will need to reload. The way Poster works is only the Poster Items relevant to the main page are loaded when the main page loads. So, only page 1 if using pagination, not pages 2-xxx.

Then, when a search term is entered only the results are displayed. This is what makes Poster great for presenting large amounts of sortable/searchable data. If it loaded everything all the time, all pages would be horribly slow.

The opening at the top of the page can be fixed, again, @instacks needs to elaborate here.

Going out on a limb here, I’d say limitless.

The page I linked to above uses the Poster Markdown file system. So, all records are stored as markdown files in a designated folder on the server. So really, you can have as many as you want.

If though you didn’t want to go the markdown route, and have each poster item as a stacks setup on the page, I’d suggest you’d top out at about a hundred or so, before working in RW got too slow in edit/preview.

But really, for something as big as you are looking, it’s been nuts to do it all in stacks, you’d have to use some sort of database system, which essentially is what Poster 2 Markdown is. it’s just a database of Markdown files in a folder on the server.

Happy to do a video chat with you at some point if you want to have a look around the setup for that page.

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Thanks for this. I shall get myself a copy and play around with it. I’d definitely NOT go down the individual stacks route - wouldn’t get anywhere near enough info on there. Markdown should do fine and with a little practice the client could do that themselves.

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Your G-sheet demo works extremely quickly for me,

I have a g sheet set -up working with over a 1000 entries and it works fine.

I cannot replicate your slow request issue

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Hi Pete. the current demo only has about 100 entries and works very well. When I used a GSheet with about 750 entries, I found that entering a search term stalled quite noticeably - only a few seconds but enough for someone to think they couldn’t type into the search box. As this list will keep growing I have some concerns.

what volume of data do you have in your GSheet? I’d be interested to compare.

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Hi Len,

My spreadsheet currently has 156 columns with 112 rows which equates to 17.472 data fields, if that helps.

Pete

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