Add a way for Docsy users to add custom search functionality

[SayakMukhopadhyay]

In the Kubernetes docs website project (https://kubernetes.io / https://github.com/kubernetes/website/), we use a custom search implementation, mostly because how it handles Google search engine having geo-blocks. Unlike Docsy, where only a single search engine can be enabled at a time, we override Docsy's search handling with our own script which can switch search engines based on the geo-restrictions.

Now, in our case, the capability of Docsy to have multiple search engines is not important as I can understand that it would be infeasible for Docsy to allow arbitrary combinations of search engines. Rather, I think it would be great to have a hook in Docsy which can be used by Docsy users to add their own search functionality without needing to override multiple other files.

Right now, k8s website overrides multiple files to add our own script.

• https://github.com/kubernetes/website/blob/99e78ac65cd08a900ed5c42e15e38cf6c39f556e/assets/js/search.js
• https://github.com/kubernetes/website/blob/99e78ac65cd08a900ed5c42e15e38cf6c39f556e/static/js/search.js
• https://github.com/kubernetes/website/blob/99e78ac65cd08a900ed5c42e15e38cf6c39f556e/layouts/_default/search.html#L41

My proposal is to add a new config param customSearch, like we have offlineSearch which will disable all Docsy provided search and allow us to add a assets/js/custom-search.js script. I think the change can be made in
https://github.com/kubernetes/website/blob/99e78ac65cd08a900ed5c42e15e38cf6c39f556e/layouts/partials/scripts.html#L36-L37 by reassigning jsSearch to the contents of the custom-search.js file, exactly the way, offline search is done.

This change would also make things much cleaner for those having custom search tools like using other online search engines or local ones like Pagefind.

I would be happy to create a PR for this.

[sftim]

Former tech lead for Kubernetes docs here. I'm also willing to help on this.

[fekete-robert]

https://github.com/google/docsy/pull/1512/files might be somewhat related

[SayakMukhopadhyay]

https://github.com/google/docsy/pull/1512/files might be somewhat related

Yep, that PR would also help us. Although, I would have prefered a parameter guard for the custom search and not it being automatically implemented when all search options are disabled as someone might not want search at all.

[SayakMukhopadhyay]

Disregard my last comment regarding the guard. I now realise that if all search options are disabled and the search-input-custom partial is not present, it will cause search to be disabled completely and hence no extra guards are needed.

Still, I wonder if it would be better to have an explicit guard.