Restricting AjaxSearch Results to Selected Parent Sections

AjaxSearch becomes much more useful on large sites when it can search within a chosen section instead of across the entire content tree. the underlying example used a category selector to pass a parent resource into the search configuration and limit results accordingly.

Core idea

Instead of hard-coding one parent list, pass the selected parent ID from a form and feed it into the AjaxSearch configuration.

$dcfg['parents'] = $_POST['categoryList'];

Example form pattern

<select name="categoryList" id="categoryList">
    <option value="">All sections</option>
    <option value="11">Section 11</option>
    <option value="16">Section 16</option>
</select>

The practical challenge is preserving the selected value and keeping the form state consistent between requests. Once that is handled, AjaxSearch can behave like a scoped section search rather than a global lookup.

If the implementation starts becoming too heavy, that is also the point where it is worth reconsidering whether evoSearch or another search tool is a better match for the scale of the project.