Search Result Ranking

A micro web-application that allows users to parse Google Search Results (or any search engines) and list all results where the link contains the given URL.

Note: This application was created using Laravel 8 Framework and utilizes Google's Custom Search JSON API which only has a limit of 100 (search) requests per day.

Installation

To install, you simply clone this repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/MorganGonzales/search-result-ranking.git

Then install its dependencies using Composer.

$ composer install

Copy the .env.example file and rename it to .env.

These variables are application specific hence needs to be specified.

APP_NAME='Search Result Ranking'
APP_ENV=local
APP_DEBUG=true
APP_URL=http://search-result-ranking.herokuapp.com/

Note: Set APP_ENV=production when deploying in production

You need to specify these fields in your .env to integrate this application with Google Custom Search API.

SEARCH_ENGINE_API_KEY=
SEARCH_ENGINE_ID=

For more information on how to setup Google Custom Search API, you may refer to this documentation

Design Patterns Applied

Factory Method

This is the concrete creator class that creates a SearchEngineBuilder instance based on the $name provided.

class SearchEngineBuilderFactory
{
    public static function create(string $name): SearchEngineBuilder
    {
        $className = 'App\\Services\\SearchEngines\\' . \ucfirst($name) . 'SearchEngineBuilder';

        return new $className;
    }
}

Usage (somewhere in GetUrlRankingsFromSearchResult.php)

$searchEngineBuilder = SearchEngineBuilderFactory::create(env('SEARCH_ENGINE'));  
  
return $searchEngineBuilder  
    ->setApiKey(env('SEARCH_ENGINE_API_KEY'))  
    ->setSearchEngineId(env('SEARCH_ENGINE_ID'))  
    ->setSearchUrl(env('SEARCH_ENGINE_URL'))  
    ->build();

Builder Pattern

This is the builder interface which specifies the methods for creating the necessary parameters for the SearchEngine object

/**
 * SearchEngineBuilder.php 
 */
interface SearchEngineBuilder
{
    public function setApiKey(string $apiKey): self;

    public function setSearchEngineId(string $searchEngineId): self;

    public function setSearchUrl(string $url): self;

    public function setGeolocation(string $countryCode): self;

    public function build(): SearchEngine;
}

The concrete builder class that follows the builder interface (above) and provide specific implementations of the builder steps. Mutator methods are intentionally defined to be fluent to allow chaining.

/**
 * GoogleSearchEngineBuilder.php
 */
class GoogleSearchEngineBuilder implements SearchEngineBuilder
{
    // Some codes here...

    public function setApiKey(string $apiKey): self
    {
        $this->apiKey = $apiKey;

        return $this;
    }

    public function setSearchEngineId(string $searchEngineId): self
    {
        $this->searchEngineId = $searchEngineId;

        return $this;
    }

    public function setSearchUrl(string $url): self
    {
        $this->searchUrl = $url;

        return $this;
    }

    public function setGeolocation(string $countryCode): self
    {
        $this->geoLocation = $countryCode;

        return $this;
    }

    public function build(): SearchEngine
    {
        $this->checkIfReadyToBuild();

        $searchEngine = new GoogleSearchEngine($this->apiKey, $this->searchEngineId, $this->searchUrl);
        $searchEngine->setGeoLocation($this->geoLocation);

        return $searchEngine;
    }

    // Some other codes here ...
}

In this scenario, a specific director class was not created for simplicity. Instead, it was included as part of the GetUrlRankingsFromSearchResult service class. This code snippet (which can be in a separate director class) is responsible for executing the building steps in a particular sequence (sequence does not matter much in this case)

// GetUrlRankingsFromSearchResult.php
private static function createSearchEngine(): SearchEngine
{
    $searchEngineBuilder = SearchEngineBuilderFactory::create(env('SEARCH_ENGINE'));

    return $searchEngineBuilder
        ->setApiKey(env('SEARCH_ENGINE_API_KEY'))
        ->setSearchEngineId(env('SEARCH_ENGINE_ID'))
        ->setSearchUrl(env('SEARCH_ENGINE_URL'))
        ->build();
}

Running Test

To execute both unit and feature test, you may enter this command (on your local)

$ php artisan test

Alternatively, you can simply just run PHPUnit

$ vendor/bin/phpunit

Developer Notes

• The current search result is simply being flashed to the session variable for simplicity. If persistence of historical results will be needed, a database storage will be required.
• If we want to support various search engines (other than Google), it would require to set a configuration file for each type as configuration options may vary.