Create your first integration
This is part three of the get started walkthrough series.
The previous parts of the walkthrough series describe how to configure entities and experiences for your specific requirements.
This walkthrough describes how your developer integrates an application with Search. The developer can choose to use the Sitecore Cloud SDK, the SDK for React, the JS Data package, or the API.
This walkthrough describes how to:
Retrieve information on hosts and paths
To retrieve information on hosts and paths:
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On the menu bar, click Developer Resources. On the API Access tab, your developer can copy the endpoints for Server, Authentication, Search and Recommendation, Events, and Incremental Feed.
Set up a subdomain
You can set up a subdomain for your implementation. This requires configuring your domain and CNAME records.
Using a subdomain provides the following advantages:
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Avoids tracking blocks - ad blockers and intelligent tracking prevention (ITP) technologies commonly block cookies from third-party domains, affecting services like Search that rely on cookies for anonymous visitor tracking. To circumvent this, you can create a subdomain, like rfk.yourdomain.com, allowing Search to store cookies under your domain. This approach prevents Search cookies from being flagged as third-party, ensuring uninterrupted tracking and reporting through your dedicated subdomain.
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Simplifies authentication - running Search on your subdomain means that it's automatically trusted, removing the need for extra authentication steps.
To set up domain delegation, do one of the following:
Integrate into a website or an application
Sitecore Search is preconfigured with experiences using the entities Content, Product, Category, and Store. These experiences are displayed on a website or application integrated with Search as soon as indexing is complete.
You'll need to update the URL or the URL pattern associated with the preconfigured pages to match your application.
You can learn more about search experience integration options and events tracking in the Sitecore Search developer documentation. This also includes tracking visitor interactions, which are used to drive personalization and generate analytics insights. Depending on what you want to implement, the effort needed to customize your integration can vary.
To integrate your website or application with Search, choose one of the following options according to your current setup:
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For a React implementation - install the Search JS SDK for React and the UI Components CLI, then use the CLI to add widgets to your website or application.
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For non-React JavaScript frameworks - install the JS Data package and then make your first query to fetch data.
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For all other implementations - use the API documentation to create search experiences and send events.
Refer to the developer guide for more details of the various integration methods.
Next steps
The following procedures describe more ways for you to explore Search functionality and personalize experiences:
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Create additional pages and widgets as listed in your plan.
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Add rules to the search and recommendation widgets.