SearchAPI

SearchAPI is a library for a semantic similarity search. This API creates the representations of the search queries and the attributes of the documents using a chosen text similarity method. Depending on the configuration, the vector representation or the text of an attribute is used to create the index of the documents. A search query requests a search server such as Elasticsearch, which uses an appropriate distance measure and a score function to determine a similarity value and use it to rank the results. As an example, the SearchAPI was adapted for the web-based information system for serious games SG-IC.

Installation

$ git clone https://github.com/serious-games-darmstadt/text-similarity-search.git
$ cd text-similarity-search
$ cp .env.example .env
$ docker-compose up -d --build

Configuration

.env / .env.example

• WEBSITE_URL: URL of the web page that provides the games as JSON under /api/{lang}/games (default: http://localhost:3000)
• ELASTIC_URL: URL of the Elasticsearch cluster (default: http://localhost:9200)
• APP_KEY: Key as a protection of the index creation
• CACHE_MIN: Duration of the caching (in memory) of the search queries in minutes (default: 60 min)
• MIN_SCORE: fixed minimum score (default: sum of all weights of the attributes in vector representation)

attribute.json

The JSON array contains an object with the following values for each attribute to be considered.

• attribute: path in JSON like gameInfo.titleInfo.title (.: object; []: array; [*]: array of objects; *: all values of an object)
• boost: weighting of the attribute (default: 0 - no boost)
• vector: true if saved as vector representation and false if saved as text (default: true)
• name: alternative name if not to be derived from attributes (default: attribute)
• source: Attributes to be returned on result (default: false)
• search: Attributes to be taken into account during search (default: true)
• similar: Attributes to be considered when comparing similarity between documents (default: false)
• similar_boost: Alternative weighting for similarity comparison between documents (default: boost)

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

License

Distributed under the Apache 2.0 License. See LICENSE for more information.