Ultrasphinx
Ruby on Rails configurator and client to the Sphinx full text search engine.
== License
Copyright 2007-2008 Cloudburst, LLC. Licensed under the AFL 3. See the included LICENSE file. Some portions copyright Pat Allan, distributed under the MIT license, and used with permission. Some portions copyright PJ Hyett and Mislav Marohnić, distributed under the MIT license, and used with permission.
The public certificate for the gem is here[http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/25331/evan_weaver-original-public_cert.pem].
If you use this software, please {make a donation}[http://blog.evanweaver.com/donate/], or {recommend Evan}[http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/7739-evan-weaver] at Working with Rails.
== Requirements
* MySQL 5.0, or PostgreSQL 8.2
* Sphinx 0.9.8-rc2
* Rails 2.0.2
More recent versions than listed are usually ok.
== Features
Sphinx/Ultrasphinx is the fastest and most stable Rails fulltext search solution.
Features include:
* searching and ranking across multiple models
* delta index support
* excerpt highlighting
* Google-style query parser
* spellcheck
* faceting on text, date, and numeric fields
* field weighting, merging, and aliasing
* geodistance
* <tt>belongs_to</tt> and <tt>has_many</tt> includes
* drop-in compatibility with will_paginate[http://err.lighthouseapp.com/projects/466/home]
* drop-in compatibility with Interlock[http://blog.evanweaver.com/files/doc/fauna/interlock/]
* multiple deployment environments
* comprehensive Rake tasks
And some other things.
= Usage
== Installation
First, install Sphinx itself. Get the {0.9.8 snapshot}[http://www.sphinxsearch.com/downloads.html], then run <tt>./configure</tt>, <tt>make</tt>, and <tt>sudo make install</tt>. Make sure to set your <tt>./configure</tt> flags: <tt>----prefix</tt> if necessary, and also <tt>----with-pgsql</tt> if you need Postgres support.
You also need the <tt>chronic</tt> gem:
sudo gem install chronic
Then, install the plugin:
script/plugin install git://github.com/fauna/ultrasphinx.git
Next, copy the <tt>examples/default.base</tt> file to <tt>RAILS_ROOT/config/ultrasphinx/default.base</tt>. This file sets up the Sphinx daemon options such as port, host, and index location.
If you need per-environment configuration, you can use <tt>RAILS_ROOT/config/ultrasphinx/development.base</tt>, etc. Note that ERb is also allowed within the <tt>.base</tt> files, and can be an alternative way to DRY up multiple configurations.
Now, in your models, use the <tt>is_indexed</tt> method to configure a model as searchable. For example:
class Post
is_indexed :fields => ['created_at', 'title', 'body']
end
For more index options, see ActiveRecord::Base .is_indexed.
== Building the index
Now run:
rake ultrasphinx:configure
rake ultrasphinx:index
rake ultrasphinx:daemon:start
To rotate the index, just rerun <tt>rake ultrasphinx:index</tt>. If the search daemon is running, it will have its index rotated live. Otherwise the new index will be installed but the daemon will remain stopped.
== Running queries
Query the daemon as so:
@search = Ultrasphinx::Search.new(:query => @query)
@search.run
@search.results
For more query options, including excerpt mode, see Ultrasphinx::Search.
= Extras
== Pagination
Once the <tt>@search</tt> object has been <tt>run</tt>, it is directly compatible with the <tt>will_paginate</tt> view helper. In your view, just do:
<%= will_paginate(@search) %>
== Spell checking
See Ultrasphinx::Spell.
== Delta indexing
Delta indexing speeds up your updates by not reindexing the entire dataset every time.
First, in your <tt>.base</tt> file, set the indexer option <tt>delta</tt> to your maximum interval between full reindexes. A day or a week is good, depending. Add a little bit to account for the time it takes the actual index to run:
delta = <%= 1.day + 30.minutes %>
Now, configure your models for delta indexing in the <tt>is_indexed</tt> call:
is_indexed :fields => ['created_at', 'title', 'body'],
:delta => true
Now you can run <tt>rake ultrasphinx:index:delta</tt> frequently, and only records that were changed within 1 day will be reindexed. You will need to run <tt>rake ultrasphinx:index:main</tt> once a day to move the delta contents into the main index.
See ActiveRecord::Base .is_indexed and DEPLOYMENT_NOTES[link:files/DEPLOYMENT_NOTES.html] for more.
== Available Rake tasks
See RAKE_TASKS[link:files/RAKE_TASKS.html].
== Deployment notes
See DEPLOYMENT_NOTES[link:files/DEPLOYMENT_NOTES.html].
== Gotchas
Note that since Ultrasphinx preloads indexed models, you need to make sure those models have their own dependencies in place early in the boot process. This may require adjusting the general plugin load order or moving monkey-patches from <tt>lib/</tt> to <tt>vendor/plugins/</tt>.
PostgreSQL 8.2 and higher are well supported. However, make sure the stored procedure migration gets generated correctly. If you did not install the plugin via <tt>script/install</tt>, run <tt>script/generate ultrasphinx_migration</tt> by hand.
== Reporting problems
The support forum is here[http://rubyforge.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=14244].
Patches and contributions are very welcome. Please note that contributors are required to assign copyright for their additions to Cloudburst, LLC.
== Further resources
* http://sphinxsearch.com/doc.html
* http://sphinxsearch.com/forum/forum.html?id=1
* http://blog.evanweaver.com/articles/2007/07/09/ultrasphinx-searching-the-world-in-231-seconds
) is private.
