What is the proper way for listening SearchManager results in JavaScript

[harshpatel]

I tried the following ways:

Way 1: One method is to run search and wait for its results is as follows:

require([
    "splunkjs/mvc/searchmanager",
    "splunkjs/mvc/simplexml/ready!"
], function (
    SearchManager
) {
    // search to run
    var defaultTableSearch = new SearchManager({
        id: "populate-default-table",
        preview: true,
        cache: true,
        search: mvc.tokenSafe(`##your search query here##`)
    });
    // fetch results from search
    var defaultResults = defaultTableSearch.data("results");

    // wait for the search to return results
    defaultResults.on("data", function () {
        var data = defaultResults.data();
        // do something with data...
    });
});

Problem with Way 1: With the above method, if our search doesn't result in any data then it will not trigger on("data" ...); at all.

Way 2: One other solution may be to listen onto search:done event on search manager
Problem with Way 2: it's not guaranteed we will get results immediately after that event gets triggered.

Is there something wrong I'm doing or something I'm missing?

Note: Blocking search solves this but I want to find a proper way to do it asynchronously.

Thanks.

==================================================================================================
Edit:
I was missing two arguments for search:done callback function from which I can fetch the results as follows:

defaultTableSearch.on("search:done", function (state, job) {
        if (state.content.resultCount === 0) {
            console.log("no results");
        } else {
            // Get the job from the server to display more info
            job.fetch(function (err) {
                // Get the results and display them
                job.results({}, function (err, results) {
                    // do something with results...
                    console.log(results);
                });
            });
        }
    });

[jeffland · Accepted solution]

The proper way to listen for result events is using defaultTableSearch.data("results").on("data", callback). If you need to also act if there are no results returned, a case in which the data callback is not called, you can check your search results in the search:done callback for the number of results and only run code if it is zero:

search.on("search:done", function(state, job) {
    if (state.content.resultCount === 0) {
        alert("no results");
    }
});

Refer to this answer for a past discussion.

[harshpatel]

Thanks! I wish Splunk doc for its JS stack was well documented with examples like it is for other things.

[jeffland]

I couldn't agree more. Just FYI, there is a Web Framework Component Reference which at least covers the basics. It's not as good as the splunk docs though, but they set a fairly high standard.