crossTerm API with C#

This example illustrates all available search types by way of a small desktop application written in C#. The application retrieves first terms and then properties in a second step. It illustrates usage information by coloring.

Getting started

If you want to reproduce this example, you can download and extract the ZIP file.

Search Modes

This client illustrates the search modes SearchTerms, WildcardSearch and SearchTermsInText.

In the UI, the modes SearchTerms and WildcardSearch are combined. If the user enters a string with the * character, WildcardSearch is started internally - otherwise, SearchTerms is used.

Search Option Languages

The client illustrates how language information can be provided as parameters for the search.

The search functions accept language codes (LCIDs) for source and target languages as parameters (see crossTerm API online help: /Help/ResourceModel?modelName=TermsSearchParameters).

However, this example application displays language labels for selection in a drop-down list, so the user does not need to provide LCIDs. The languages are those languages which have been activated for usage in the Across Language Server, and thus all languages for which terms might exist in crossTerm.

The following code retrieves the language labels. For retrieving the Across Language Server languages, the crossTerm API offers the controller /deprecated/api/v1/Languages. (This controller might change or move in the future.) The service URL is represented in TemporaryCoreDataContext ctx, so the Languages may be retrieved via ctx.Languages.ExecuteAsync().

In SearchTermsViewModel.cs :

private async void LoadLanguagesAsync(){
 IsBusy =true;try{
    TemporaryCoreDataContext ctx =new TemporaryCoreDataContext();var query = ctx.Languages.OrderBy(l => l.Name);
    Languages =new ObservableCollection<Language>(await ctx.Languages.ExecuteAsync());}catch(Exception exc){
     LastError = exc;}
     IsBusy =false;}

Load options

The load options show the effect of retrieving all properties at once or later (in the background). If all information is retrieved in one go, this may lead to waiting times. In particular, delays might be observed for large terminology databases, containing terms with many properties, and when the wildcard search returns a lot of results.

You can observe the effects by the time elapsed (in ms), shown in the bottom right corner.

The following screenshot shows a test with Load ... immediately turned off, and another test on the same crossTerm data with Load ... immediately turned on. Note the difference in load time.

Load ... immediately turned off	Load ... immediately turned on

The following code snippet shows where Load Options are checked (SearchTermsViewModel.cs ):

if(AllowLoadProperties){
   queryText ="$expand=FoundTerms/Properties/Children";if(AllowLoadEntries){
        queryText +=",FoundTerms/Entry/Properties/Children";}}elseif(AllowLoadEntries){
    queryText ="$expand=FoundTerms/Entry";}else{
    queryText ="$expand=FoundTerms";}

Usage information

As long as term properties haven't been loaded (see options on immediate/background loading above), no information about the intended usage of terms is known. During this time, the bar in the left margin is gray for each term.

• After loading the term properties, the Usage flag is interpreted as follows:
• Recommended: green
• DoNotUse: red
• Normal: blue

So, in the example above, cancel and calculate have the usage information recommended.

Search terms in text

• The search mode SearchTermsInText allows to find all terms in a longer text. The results are represented along with
• the character range of the matching string,
• the number of matching terms for this range, and
• "Terms", a control that may be expanded to see the term names of found terms.

The function to call SearchTermsInText looks like this (CrossTermDataContext.cs):

public Task<IEnumerable<TermsSearchResult>>
SearchTermsInTextAsync(string text, TermsSearchParameters parameters,int maxWordsCombination =3,string additionalODataSettings =null){returnthis.ExecuteAsync<TermsSearchResult>(new Uri("/Terms/SearchTermsInText?"+(additionalODataSettings ??"$expand=FoundTerms"), UriKind.Relative),"POST",false,new BodyOperationParameter("query",new SearchTermsInTextQuery
      {
        TextFragment = text,
        MaxWordsCombination = maxWordsCombination,
        Parameters = parameters));}