When creating a Web Part, there is often some configuration data that is needed to be able to reuse the Web Part for different sites or purposes. Creating a Web Part property makes it much easier to maintain the code than embedding configuration values in the code.

For the EmployeeCorner Web Part, we are going to establish a text field that allows the user to specify the Search service application to use when searching for the user profiles in the next section. The SearchProxyName property is detailed as follows:

private string searchProxyName;
[WebBrowsable(true),
WebDisplayName("Search Proxy Name"),
WebDescription("Please provide the name of your Search Service
Application."),
Personalizable(PersonalizationScope.Shared)]
public string SearchProxyName
{
get { return searchProxyName; }
set { searchProxyName = value; }
}

To work with the Search service application we need to start by adding a reference to the following namespaces within the project and EmployeeCorner Web Part:

Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration
Microsoft.Office.Server.Search
Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query
Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration

The connection to the service application is established through the SearchServiceApplicationProxy object, which is loaded using the SearchProxyName Web Part property previously identified. The following code should be added to a new method called Display() that is called from the OnLoad() method:

SearchQueryAndSiteSettingsServiceProxy settingsProxy =
SPFarm.Local.ServiceProxies.GetValue<SearchQueryAndSiteSettingsSer
viceProxy>();
SearchServiceApplicationProxy searchProxy =
settingsProxy.ApplicationProxies.GetValue<SearchServiceApplication
Proxy>(this.searchProxyName);
FullTextSqlQuery mQuery = new FullTextSqlQuery(searchProxy);

The FullTextSqlQuery class provides an interface to execute complex queries against the search index. Queries executed against the index will perform faster than queries against the actual content such as a list or a library. As the amount of content increases, and as the number content sources you search across increases, the performance gains are even more significant, since the index provides a pre-processed source for the information.

For the FullTextSqlQuery, we will define the fields that we want to see, the scope, and the criteria to match it. For the fields you will want to make sure that the desired fields are set up as Managed Properties. The name of a Managed Property may be different than the name in the actual profile. In this example, the user profile field's internal name is SPS-HireDate, but the Managed Property name is simply HireDate. You can check the Managed Property mappings within the Search service application by clicking the Metadata Properties link in the Quick Launch menu.

For any search involving people, it is required that you use the People search scope so that it returns user profile information instead of regular site content. The New Hire Query will pull the specified fields, from the People search scope, for anyone with a HireDate that is within 30 days of today. An example of the query is shown as follows:

mQuery.QueryText = "SELECT LastName, FirstName, JobTitle,
accountname, HireDate, Birthday, PictureThumbnailURL FROM SCOPE()
WHERE (\"scope\" = 'People') AND HireDate >= DATEADD (DAY, -30,
GETGMTDATE())";

After setting the query, there are a few other properties that need to be set before executing the query, which are shown as follows:

mQuery.ResultTypes = ResultType.RelevantResults;
mQuery.TrimDuplicates = true;
mQuery.RowLimit = 100;
ResultTableCollection resultNew = mQuery.Execute();

Formatting the output of the Web Part begins with identifying any controls that are needed within the CreateChildControls() method. This method will run as part of the initialization process before the OnLoad() method, ensuring the controls are available. The output that will be rendered, will be added to the literal control. The CreateChildControls() method code is shown as follows:

protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
this.literalMessage = new Literal();
this.literalMessage.ID = "literalMessage";
this.Controls.Add(this.literalMessage);
}

Within the Display() method, after the Execute() method previously called, we will now process the results. When executing a search query, the resulting ResultsTableCollection contains a number of different types of results. For the content that will be displayed here, we are interested in the ResultType.RelevantResults. We will check to validate that there are records returned, then extract just the relevant results.

Content that will be rendered to the screen will be formatted in a StringBuilder object called messages. After the main content is structured, we will iterate through the DataTable object to add each of the individual records returned from the query. The code is shown as follows:

DataTable resultsNewHire = new DataTable();
if (resultNew.Count > 0)
{
ResultTable relevantResults =
resultNew[ResultType.RelevantResults];
resultsNewHire.Load(relevantResults,
LoadOption.OverwriteChanges);
messages.AppendFormat(@"<table width='360' border='0'
cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0'><tr><td align='left'
valign='top' width='14' class='ms-wpTdSpace'
background='/Style%20Library/Images/shadow-
left.png'>&nbsp;</td><td
background='/Style%20Library/Images/mid-
background.jpg'><table><tr><td colspan='2' class='ms-
standardheader ms-WPTitle'><b>{0} New Employees in the last 30
days!</b></td></tr>", resultsNewHire.Rows.Count);
foreach (DataRow row in resultsNewHire.Rows)
{
messages.AppendFormat(@"<tr valign='center'><td width='100'><a
href='/my/person.aspx?Accountname={3}'><img src='{5}' alt='{1}
{0}' border='0'></a></td><td width='250' align='left'
valign='top'><a href='/my/person.aspx?Accountname={3}'>{1}
{0}</a><br>{2}<br>{4}</a></td></tr>", row[0].ToString(),
row[1].ToString(), row[2].ToString(), row[3].ToString(),
String.Format("{0:dddd, MMMM d yyyy}", row[4]),
row[6].ToString());
}
messages.AppendFormat(@"</table></td><td align='right'
valign='top' width='14' class='ms-wpTdSpace'
background='http://intranet/Style%20Library/Images/shadow-
right.png'>&nbsp;</td></tr></table>");
}