anchor tag <href="values"> not working in custom indexing

[Mohanasundaram]

I have custom index file created and added index rule for text property. if my search key match in href tag value present under the text value the result not display. i have tried to add href index rule also with value href.. But same issue matching result not display.

my search key value:national

my sample text value:

<p><a id="back-to-forms-link" style="display: none;" href="/content/national.html" target="_self">Back to forms</a></p>
</ul>
</ul>
</p>

my index rule:

 <text
jcr:primaryType="nt:unstructured"
name="text"
nodeScopeIndex="{Boolean}true"
propertyIndex="{Boolean}true"
type="String"
useInSpellcheck="{Boolean}true"
useInSuggest="{Boolean}false"/>

<href
jcr:primaryType="nt:unstructured"
name="href"
nodeScopeIndex="{Boolean}true"
propertyIndex="{Boolean}true"
type="String"
useInSpellcheck="{Boolean}true"
useInSuggest="{Boolean}false"/>

[SantoshSai · Accepted solution]

Hi @Mohanasundaram,

Adding a rule named href won’t help - href isn’t a JCR property on your node; it’s an HTML attribute inside the text string. Oak indexes JCR properties, not HTML attributes. So you must either search/index the text property correctly, or store the URL in its own property and index that.

See below 1 options

1. Keep HTML in text and make full-text work

1. Query with full-text (not equality):

   • CONTAINS(text, 'national') (JCR-SQL2) or QueryBuilder fulltext=national.

2. In your index:

   • Put the rule under the correct nodeType (usually nt:unstructured for components).

   • Ensure text is analyzed and nodeScopeIndex=true.

   • Avoid HTML stripping if you need attribute values: if your index has an HTMLStripCharFilter, it will drop attributes (and you’ll lose href="/content/national.html").

3. Reindex after changes (reindex=true once).

Minimal example (under /oak:index/yourIndex😞

indexRules
  nt:unstructured
    properties
      text
        analyzed=true
        nodeScopeIndex=true
        useInExcerpt=true.

If you must extract href tokens from the HTML string, use a pattern-based token filter (e.g., PatternCaptureGroup) to capture values from href="..."—but this is advanced and depends on what’s allowed in your AEM/Oak version.

OR

2. Best practice: store link separately

Change your component to also write the URL to a dedicated property (e.g., linkURL="/content/national.html"). Then index that real property:

indexRules
  nt:unstructured
    properties
      linkURL
        propertyIndex=true
        analyzed=true

Now CONTAINS(linkURL, 'national') (or equality on linkURL) will match reliably.