How to debug Sitefinity search

February 16, 2020

Recently I had a problem with the Sitefinity search because it was showing wrong search results. And to find what exactly is being indexed, I followed these steps.

Create a CustomPageInboundPipe extending PageInboundPipe:

`CustomPageInboundPipe.cs`

using Telerik.Sitefinity.Abstractions;
using Telerik.Sitefinity.Pages.Model;
using Telerik.Sitefinity.Publishing;
using Telerik.Sitefinity.Publishing.Pipes;
namespace Website
{
    public class CustomPageInboundPipe : PageInboundPipe
    {
        protected override void SetWrapperObjectProperties(WrapperObject wrapperObject, PageNode node)
        {
            base.SetWrapperObjectProperties(wrapperObject, node);
            var title = wrapperObject.GetProperty("Title").ToString();
            if (wrapperObject.HasProperty("Content") && title == "Home")
            {
                var content = wrapperObject.AdditionalProperties["Content"];
                Log.Write(content);
            }
        }
    }
}

Here we are checking for a page that has the title Home. You can replace it with any problematic page. And we are writing to the log files the value of the Content property. It contains the full HTML of the page that is being indexed. Sitefinity logs the value in App_Data/Sitefinity/Logs/Trace.log or you can Debug it and inspect the value.

In Global.asax file you can register the new CustomPageInboundPipe

`Global.asax`

protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    Bootstrapper.Initialized +=
        new EventHandler<ExecutedEventArgs>(this.Bootstrapper_Initialized);
}

Here we are subscribing to the Initialized event in Sitefinity

private void Bootstrapper_Initialized(object sender, ExecutedEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.CommandName == "Bootstrapped")
    {
        PublishingSystemFactory.UnregisterPipe(PageInboundPipe.PipeName);
        PublishingSystemFactory.RegisterPipe(PageInboundPipe.PipeName, typeof(CustomPageInboundPipe));
    }
}

Here we are Unregistering the original PageInboundPipe and registering our custom implementation.

Lastly go to /Sitefinity/Administration/Search find your search index and Actions > Reindex

If everything was successful when you go to the logs folder you should see the generated Trace.logs file with the indexed content of the page.