How to add search by category in Magento mini search?

There is no free extension in magento commerce which will help you to search your store with particular category. Anyone finds the way how to add search by category in Magento mini search?

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Hi Thuong Tong,

There is no free extension in magento commerce which will help you to search your store with particular category. I tried from myself and able to do, I am sharing my exprerience here with.
Attachment 1630
First create the drop down list of all category in form.mini.phtml

<select name="category" id="category_search_field">
<option value="">-- Any Category --</option>
<?php foreach ($catalog->getStoreCategories() as $_category): ?>
<?php if($_category->hasChildren()): ?>
<option class="parent-cat" value="<?php echo $_category->getId(); ?>"><?php echo $_category->getName();?></option>
<?php foreach ($_category->getChildren() as $subcategory):
if($subcategory->getIsActive()) : ?>
<option value="<?php echo $subcategory->getId(); ?>"<?php echo ($this->getRequest()->getQuery('category') == $subcategory->getId() ? ' selected="selected"': "") ?>><?php echo $subcategory->getName(); ?></option>
<?php endif; endforeach; ?>
<?php elseif($_category->getIsActive()): ?>
<option value="<?php echo $_category->getId(); ?>"><?php echo $_category->getName();?></option>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php endforeach ?>
</select>

Now go to app/code/core/Mage/CatalogSearch/Helper and open the Data.php and add the below code

public function getStoreCategories()
{
$helper = Mage::helper('catalog/category');
return $helper->getStoreCategories();
}
public function getSelectedCategory()
{
$catid = (int)addslashes($_REQUEST['category']);
$cat="";
if($catid>1)
$cat = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($catid);
return $cat;
}

Now go to app/code/core/Mage/CatalogSearch/Model and open the Layer.php

replace

public function prepareProductCollection($collection)
{
$collection
->addAttributeToSelect(Mage::getSingleton('catalo g/config')->getProductAttributes())
->addSearchFilter(Mage::helper('catalogsearch')->getQuery()->getQueryText())
->setStore(Mage::app()->getStore())
->addMinimalPrice()
->addFinalPrice()
->addTaxPercents()
->addStoreFilter()
->addUrlRewrite();
Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product_status')->addVisibleFilterToCollection($collection);
Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product_visibility')->addVisibleInSearchFilterToCollection($collection) ;
return $this;
}

with

public function prepareProductCollection($collection)
{
if(Mage::helper('catalogsearch')->getSelectedCategory()!="")
{
$collection
->addAttributeToSelect(Mage::getSingleton('catalo g/config')->getProductAttributes())
->addSearchFilter(Mage::helper('catalogsearch')->getQuery()->getQueryText())
->setStore(Mage::app()->getStore())
->addMinimalPrice()
->addFinalPrice()
->addTaxPercents()
->addStoreFilter()
->addCategoryFilter(Mage::helper('catalogsearch')->getSelectedCategory())
->addUrlRewrite();
}
else
{
$collection
->addAttributeToSelect(Mage::getSingleton('catalo g/config')->getProductAttributes())
->addSearchFilter(Mage::helper('catalogsearch')->getQuery()->getQueryText())
->setStore(Mage::app()->getStore())
->addMinimalPrice()
->addFinalPrice()
->addTaxPercents()
->addStoreFilter()
->addUrlRewrite();
}
Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product_status')->addVisibleFilterToCollection($collection);
Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product_visibility')->addVisibleInSearchFilterToCollection($collection) ;

return $this;
}

I hope this is helpful for you.

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If you want to do something like limit your search to items in top-level categories, you could add radio buttons to the form-mini to accomplish this.