Displaying multiple Search Results on a single page

Issue

• I want to display multiple Search Results in the same page.
• I am using tabs (for example, the out-of-the-box Tabs fragment), and I want each tab to have its own Search Results widget.
• How can I achieve this?

Environment

• Liferay DXP 2023.Q4

Resolution

• To achieve this, you can leverage the Federated Search functionality.
• As an example, consider the following scenario: I want to build a page with 3 search results to display files stored in a specific Documents and Media folder. This could be an approach:
  • Create 3 folders in Documents and Media administration. Add files to those folders. For this example, they will be given a similar title.
  • Create a Search Page like this:
  • For each widget in the columns, configure the Federated Search Key option with the same value (for instance, 'column1', 'column2' and 'column3').
  • Configure the Custom Filters like this:
    • Filter Field: dataRepositoryId
    • Filter Value: <folder id>
  • Now, go ahead and mark the Search Bars as 'invisible' for regular users, except the main one at the top.
  • You probably want to make the Custom Filters invisible as well, and any other changes that fit your needs.
  • Finally, this is how the page appears to a regular user after performing a search:
• Note that, if you are using Blueprints, you can follow the same approach for the Blueprint Options widget.

Additional Information

• If you are dealing with multiple sources, you can query alternate indexes other than the Liferay DXP index. See Understanding Low Level Search Options. There you can find a couple of examples.
• For 7.3 and above, you can connect to multiple Elasticsearch clusters.