ORG-FTS, a full-text search for org files with optional ivy support

Org-fts indexes all the org files you open and/or save so you can find things later when you’re not sure where they are

WARNING: This is pre-release code…

I appreciate people trying this out and sending feedback to me via issues on this repository!

Intro

Org-fts is part of the microfts project, which it uses for searching and indexing. Org-fts automatically indexes changed org files as you visit them and save them. If you delete or rename an org file, org-fts will lose track of it until you visit it again. It runs microfts whenever it indexes or searches (every time you hit a key during an ivy search), so it doesn’t need to run a service.

Microfts is fairly fast, (returning results in less than 10ms for around 3M of files); each keystroke in the screencast below does a full text search with microfts. Full text indexing does take space, however, so expect the index to take maybe 2-5 times the space of your files in the current implementation. If it gets too extravagant, I will see if there are more compact ways to store the index.

Usage

There are two packages here that each provide two commands:

org-fts provides M-x org-fts-search and M-x org-fts-find-org-file

M-x org-fts-search

Searches through all of the indexed org files and presents the results as a completion list. It returns org elements (table, paragraph, headline, etc.) that match all the terms you type. If you prefer to see every file that contains all of the terms you type (like you would see in a web search), you can customize org-fts-search-args and add -file to it. This will show only one line per file.

You can quote terms like in a web search: this "is a" test

M-x org-fts-find-org-file

Lets you pick one of the known org files

ivy-org-fts provides M-x ivy-org-fts-search and M-x ivy-org-fts-find-org-file

M-x ivy-org-fts-search

Starts an incremental search through all of the indexed org files and presents the results with ivy. It returns org elements (table, paragraph, headline, etc.) that match terms as you type them. If you prefer to see every file that contains all of the terms you type (like you would see in a web search), you can customize ivy-org-fts-search-args and add -file to it. This will show only one line per file.

You can quote terms like in a web search: this "is a" test

C-f toggles the -file argument for the search (changing between searching for chunks and for files).

M-x ivy-org-fts-find-org-file

Lets you pick one of the known org files

Screencast

Installing

download org-fts.el and (optionally) ivy-org-fts.el use M-x package-install-file to install.

Details

Automatic microfts download

If you use org-fts without customizing the org-fts-program variable, it will automatically download microfts into your emacs configuration directory.

Database file

org-fts uses a database file called org-fts.db in your emacs configuration directory. If it gets too big, you can use the microfts command to delete entries. You can also just delete the database file and org-fts will automatically create a new one the next time you visit or save an org file.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Professor John Kitchin for testing and many suggestions!