Supervised classification based on error-correcting output codes (ECOC) is a new research direction to improve the generalization of classifiers, yet there is no general method to construct ECOC for any number of classes. This paper analyzes the properties of ECOC and presents a search coding method which corresponds to codewords with integers and gets a satisfied output code through searching an integer range in sequence. It then describes the supervised classification technique based on the search coding method. By applying the search coding method to na?ve-Bayes algorithm and BP neural networks, experimental results show that the method is an effective and general coding method to construct error-correcting output codes.