Search forms can help find products that satisfy a set of criteria. For example, a search form might help find recipes that contain substring such as Cayenne, or recipes that are tagged with a keyword such as Cajun.

You build search forms with the form handler class atg.repository.servlet.SearchFormHandler. This handler uses the search criteria to return items from one or more repositories, and one or more item types from a given repository. SearchFormHandler is a subclass of atg.repository.servlet.GenericFormHandler,so it inherits properties and handler methods common to all form handlers.

Note: Some ATG applications might provide subclasses of SearchFormHandler.

Search types

The SearchFormHandler supports several search methods, specified by setting one or more of the following Boolean properties:


Search type


Keyword Search: Uses user-supplied data to query the contents of string properties that store keywords


Text Search: Takes a user-entered search string and performs text pattern matching on one or more text properties


Hierarchical Search: Returns all parent and descendant items of the specified item.


Advanced Search: Provides search options for each property specified in the form handler’s advancedSearchPropertyNames property.

Combined search types are discussed under Combination Search.