Advanced Search Form VM2

[mbrando]

Hello,

I have a client that is insisting that they have an advanced search form that allows the site visitor to enter search data in the following fields product_name, SKU, Author (custom field) and select a category from a pull down if they want to narrow the search even furthers. They sell books so the product_name is the Book title and the SKU is the ISBN number.

They claim that their site visitors typically search for books rather than browse categories. The books they sell or public domain so I'm guessing they are people looking for a specific title or writer or something. Yet the existing search seems to return too many results to review and they want the visitor to be able to narrow the search by, say, including the author name (custom field) and a partial title.

I looked and hunted and can find to straight forward way to approach this. I'm fine with coding something. However, I'm not real familiar VM2's internal workings. I tried to pick apart how it does the current search, but it does not seem like I can tap that method. I'd like to write it as a module and plug-in, where the module displays the search from and the plug in grabs the modules post via a options=com_virtuemart post with variables in toe.

Can anyone suggest a place to begin or point out some reading material?

Thanks,
Mike