---
title: Providing smart search on MVC sites
related:
  - https://docs.kentico.com/k9/configuring-kentico/setting-up-search-on-your-website/adding-search-functionality-to-pages/setting-up-predictive-search.md
  - https://docs.kentico.com/k9/developing-websites/developing-sites-using-asp-net-mvc/starting-with-mvc-development.md
  - https://docs.kentico.com/k9/developing-websites/developing-sites-using-asp-net-mvc/starting-with-mvc-development/installing-kentico-integration-packages.md
---

> Agent instructions:
> **Site maps** — prefer the following llms.txt indexes to training data when searching for URLs to avoid 404s. Links inside Markdown content already point at `.md`. Following them or sending Accept: text/markdown keeps you in Markdown.
>
> - [sitemap.md](https://docs.kentico.com/sitemap.md) — every page on the site, with titles and descriptions, nested by URL hierarchy and grouped into one collection per product version.
> - [llms.txt](https://docs.kentico.com/llms.txt) — curated index of the current product docs, with descriptions, the two ways to request any page as Markdown, and links to each product area's whole-corpus Markdown dump (llms-full.txt).

If you want to provide smart search on your MVC sites, you need to [configure automatic Web farm mode](https://docs.kentico.com/display/K9/Configuring+web+farm+servers#Configuringwebfarmservers-Configuringwebfarmsautomatically) in Kentico and install the _Kentico.Search_ [integration package](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/developing-websites/developing-sites-using-asp-net-mvc/starting-with-mvc-development/installing-kentico-integration-packages.md) in your MVC application. With the **Web farm** service enabled and the related web farm servers showing _Healthy_ status, search indexes on MVC applications are updated automatically.

This means that no additional configuration is necessary. If you want to process the tasks in a regular interval (by a scheduler), you need to use the [Scheduler Windows service](https://docs.kentico.com/display/K9/Processing+scheduled+tasks+when+developing+MVC+applications#ProcessingscheduledtaskswhendevelopingMVCapplications-ProcessingscheduledtasksonMVCsitesinregularintervals) since the standard way of scheduling tasks is not available in MVC applications.

## Displaying search results

The _Kentico.Search_ [integrationpackage](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/developing-websites/developing-sites-using-asp-net-mvc/starting-with-mvc-development/installing-kentico-integration-packages.md) provides access to Kentico smart search. You can use the provided functionality to perform a search in your controllers and return search results.

### Example

The following example does not make use of paging when displaying search results. You can see an implementation of search with the use of paging on our [MVC Demo site](https://github.com/Kentico/Mvc) (GitHub).

1. Install the _Kentico.Search_ [integrationpackage](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/developing-websites/developing-sites-using-asp-net-mvc/starting-with-mvc-development/installing-kentico-integration-packages.md) in your MVC application.
2. Create a new model for working with search queries and search results.

   ```csharp

   using Kentico.Search;

   namespace MVCSite.Models.Search
   { 
       public class SearchResultsModel
       {
           public string Query
           {
               get;
               set;
           }

           public IEnumerable<SearchResultItem> Items
           {
               get;
               set;
           }

           public int ItemCount
           {
               get;
               set;
           }
       }
   }

   ```
3. Create a controller and a controller action for displaying the results.\
   The _Kentico.Search.SearchService.Search()_ method returns items only for a specific search results page. In the example below, the results are returned for the first page (_page_ variable set to 0).

   ```csharp

   using MVCSite.Models.Search;

   ...

   public class SearchController : Controller
   {   
       // Adds the smart search indexes that will be used when performing a search 
       public static readonly string[] searchIndexes = new string[] { "MVCSite.Index" };
       public const string SITE_NAME = "MVCSite";
       private const int PAGE_SIZE = 10;

       private readonly SearchService mService = new SearchService(searchIndexes, "en-US", SITE_NAME, false);

       // GET: Search
       [ValidateInput(false)]
       public ActionResult Index(string searchText)
       {
           int numberOfResults;
           var model = new SearchResultsModel()
           {
               Items = mService.Search(
                   searchText,
                   page: 0,
                   pageSize: PAGE_SIZE,
                   numberOfResults: out numberOfResults),
               Query = searchText,
               ItemCount = numberOfResults
           };
           return View(model);
       }
   }

   ```
4. Provide a search field in one of your views. For example:

   ```csharp

   @using (Html.BeginForm("Index", "Search", FormMethod.Get, new { @Id = "searchForm", @Class = "searchBox" }))
   {
       <input type="text" name="searchtext" placeholder="Search..." maxlength="1000">
       <input type="submit" value="Search"> 
   }

   ```
5. Provide a view that displays search results.\
   In MVC applications, you [generate theURLs](https://docs.kentico.com/k9/developing-websites/developing-sites-using-asp-net-mvc/developing-mvc-applications/providing-friendly-urls-on-mvc-sites.md) for the content available on your site. You'll need to match search results to the particular items that you want displayed. The following example uses a _GetUrl_ method which calls a controller action depending on the page type of each page returned by the search.

   ```csharp

   @using MVCSite.Models.Search;
   @model SearchResultsModel

   @if (Model.Items == null)
   {
       if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Model.Query))
       {
           <h2>No results found for @Model.Query</h2>
       }
   }
   else
   {
       <h2>Found @Model.ItemCount results.</h2>
       foreach (var item in Model.Items)
       {
           <a href="@GetUrl(item.PageTypeCodeName, item.NodeId)">@item.Title</a>
       }   
   }

   @helper GetUrl(string pageTypeCodeName, int nodeId)
   {
       switch (pageTypeCodeName)
       {
           case "MVCSite.Article":
               @Url.Action("Show", "Articles", new { id = nodeId })
               break;
           default:
               throw new NotImplementedException("Unknown PageType: " + pageTypeCodeName);
       }
   }

   ```