Can we use xDB contact to do a Lookup for users

Question

Can we use first name in the xDB contact facet and make a search from the UI using an api. I dont want to fetch all the users and do a for loop and then search for the user name like in each iteration.

Can someone please suggest me a best approach for this. This requirement is for ajax call to fetch all users starting with the text on key press.

Answer 1

API endpoint

There is an api route for that (it is being used by exp. profile in fact):

[host]/sitecore/api/ao/v1/contacts/search?pageSize=100&pageNumber=1&sort=visitCount%20desc&match=john

This will search for name and email occurances.

API method

If you want to use your custom controller, you can use the below method from API:

CustomerIntelligenceManager.ContactSearchProvider.Find(new ContactSearchParameters())

Content search

In case it is required to use more complex queries you can use analytics index as any other to search. You should use Sitecore.ContentSearch.Analytics.Models.IndexedContact as an Indexable POCO class

using (var context = ContentSearchManager.GetIndex("sitecore_analytics_index").CreateSearchContext())
{
     var query = context.GetQueryable<IndexedContact>().Where(c=> c.Firstname.Equals("John"));
}

Answer 2

First, you'll need to create an index on that field to ensure good query performance. Execute this command from the MongoDB console:

db.Contacts.ensureIndex({ "Personal.FirstName": 1 }, { "sparse": true })

Then you can query the Collection database in your C# code:

ConnectionStringSettings connectionStringSettings = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["analytics"];
var url = new MongoUrl(connectionStringSettings.ConnectionString);
var client = new MongoClient(connectionStringSettings.ConnectionString);
MongoServer server = client.GetServer();

MongoDatabase database = server.GetDatabase(url.DatabaseName);

string searchName = "Meghan";

MongoCursor results =
    database
        .GetCollection("Contacts")
        .Find(Query.Matches("Personal.FirstName", "^" + searchName))
        .SetFields("Personal.FirstName")
        .SetLimit(10);

foreach (BsonDocument r in results)
{
    string firstName = r["Personal"]["FirstName"].AsString;
}

Keep in mind that you're getting pretty low-level with this, circumventing the Sitecore API. If the structure of data changes in the future, you'll need to adjust the query.

Also, never change contact objects directly.