Chirag is developer in St.
Petersburg, Florida who got started coding on a ZX Spectrum almost twenty years ago and has
dabbled in graphics, animation, databases, ERP/CRMs, and productivity apps. He is currently
working as an IT director and is in a graduate program in Technology Management at University
of Tampa. He co-founded Chime.TV in 2007 and Sched.org in 2008. His favorite area of
development is simple web utilities. Chirag and his wife love animals and when he's not coding
or studying, he is either kayaking or playing with their pets.Q:
Tell me about how you used Google AJAX Search API for Wiki Search and Drop Search and how you came up with the
ideas.
A: My
wife's currently in medical school and constantly doing searches online for medical terms.
Wikipedia offered tons of information but she found their search feature to be insufficient
for her needs. 90% of the time, you have no idea what you're searching for or guessing at it -
it doesn't do anything to help you out. I wanted to help my wife have a faster, more dynamic
experience so I brainstormed how to build a XML-type of search feature, similar to Google
Search Suggest, while you were on Wikipedia. (It also helped that I'd always found Wikipedia
interesting and researched databases that used it as a source of information.) That also led
me to start looking at implementation options and of them all, AJAX Search seemed the easiest
to integrate in a quick manner. Instead of taking two weeks to research documentation and then
implement with other APIs, it took about an hour with Google AJAX Search. Also, I had worked
with many Google APIs on other projects before, but the Google AJAX API was the best. The
speed was amazing!
The idea for creating Drop Search came soon after
fiddling with more Google AJAX search documentation. My implementation gives the everyday
person without a programming background the ability to add a customized search engine to any
site. It's code that you can copy and paste into your application and customize for your own
needs using CSS, which I did for my own blog. A friend of mine at Rutgers University saw what
I did and wanted the same type of feature for their professional development
site so I released the code that I created to everyone on my projects
page.
Q: Describe any obstacles you had with
implementation.
A:
There were none. Actually I had a couple of questions at first but I
looked at the forums and got the answer fairly quickly. They were around legal issues - Am I
allowed to query as I type? Is it legal that I'm doing this with Wiki search? I wish legal
terms were much clearer on Google Code. I had some assumptions, only to find out they were
recommendations rather than requirements. I do have to say that the documentation on Google
Code is perfect. One minute you're reading documentation, the next you're in the forums
reading about other developers' experiences. Help pages are broken down into every bit so it
makes coding a cakewalk. It's a really good experience compared to other
sites.
Q: Can you provide any tips for other developers
using Google AJAX Search API?
A:
Before you try to build something, find out if Google already has. Google
will build 98% of your needs on the back end, leaving you 2% of the work to focus on making
your user interface exactly what you need for the front end. Also, another tip... listen to
your wife's complaints.Thanks for your time Chirag! We love hearing from
developers in our community about inspiring stories, so if you have something you'd like to
share, visit our online submission form. Or
better yet, come to Google I/O and tell us your story in person.
It's time for
another Google Narrative, highlighting a Google AJAX Search API
developer, Chirag Mehta.