Fast fuzzy-search - the native replacement for fuzzaldrin-plus

What is fuzzaldrin-plus-fast?

• Fuzzaldrin plus is an awesome library that provides fuzzy-search that is more targeted towards filenames.
• Fuzzaldrin-plus-fast is a rewrite of the library in native C++ to make it fast. The goal is to make it a few hundred millisecond filter times for a dataset with 1M entries. This performance is helpful in Atom's fuzzy finder to open files from large projects such as Chrome/Mozilla.

Fuzzaldrin-plus-fast also provides an additional filterTree function which allows to fuzzy filter text in nested tree-like objects.

How performance is improved?

Fuzzaldrin-plus-fast achieves 10x-20x performance improvement over Fuzzaldrin plus for chromium project with 300K files. This high performance is achieved using the following techniques.

• Converting Javascript/CoffeeScript code to native C++ bindings provides 4x performance benefit.
• Use multiple threads to parallelize computation to achieve another 4x performance benefit. Currently, up to 8 threads are used if there are more than 10K candidates to filter.
• Some miscellaneous improvements provide additional benefit.

This project potentially solves the following Atom fuzzy-finder issues if used. atom/fuzzy-finder#271 and atom/fuzzy-finder#88

Is the API the same?

API is backward compatible with Fuzzaldrin and Fuzzaldrin-plus. Additional functions are provided to achieve better performance that could suit your needs

Usage

Installation:

npm install fuzzaldrin-plus-fast

To import all the functions:

import * as fuzzaldrin from 'fuzzaldrin-plus-fast'

or

const fuzzaldrin = require('fuzzaldrin-plus-fast')

filter(candidates, query, options = {})

Sort and filter the given candidates by matching them against the given query.

• candidates - An array of strings or objects.
• query - A string query to match each candidate against.
• options options. You should provide a key in the options if an array of objects are passed.

Returns an array of candidates sorted by best match against the query.

const { filter } = require('fuzzaldrin-plus-fast')

// With an array of strings
let candidates = ['Call', 'Me', 'Maybe']
let results = filter(candidates, 'me')  // ['Me', 'Maybe']

// With an array of objects
candidates = [
  {name: 'Call', id: 1}
  {name: 'Me', id: 2}
  {name: 'Maybe', id: 3}
]
results = filter(candidates, 'me', {key: 'name'}) // [{name: 'Me', id: 2}, {name: 'Maybe', id: 3}]

filterTree(candidates, query, dataKey, childrenKey, options = {})

Sort and filter the given Tree candidates by matching them against the given query.

A tree object is an object in which each entry stores the data in its dataKey and it has (may have) some children (with a similar structure) in its childrenKey. See the following example.

• candidates An array of tree objects.
• query A string query to match each candidate against.
• dataKey the key of the object (and its children) which holds the data
• childrenKey the key of the object (and its children) which hold the children
• options options
• returns An array of candidate objects in form of {data, index, level} sorted by best match against the query. Each objects has the address of the object in the tree using index and level.

const { filterTree } = require('fuzzaldrin-plus-fast')

candidates = [
  {data: "bye1", children: [{data: "hello"}]},
  {data: "Bye2", children: [{data: "_bye4"}, {data: "hel"}]},
  {data: "eye"},
]

filterTree(candidates, "he", "data", "children") // [ { data: 'hel', index: 1, level: 1 },  { data: 'hello', index: 0, level: 1 }]

// With an array of objects (similar to providing `key` to `filter` function)
const candidates = [
  {data: "helloworld"},
  {data: "bye"},
  {data: "hello"},
]
results = filter(candidates, 'hello', {key: 'name'}) // [ { data: 'hello', index: 2, level: 0 }, { data: 'helloworld', index: 0, level: 0 } ]

score(string, query, options = {})

Score the given string against the given query.

• string - The string the score.
• query - The query to score the string against.

const { score } = require('fuzzaldrin-plus-fast')

score('Me', 'me')    # 0.17099999999999999
score('Maybe', 'me') # 0.0693

match (string, query, options = {})

Gives an array of indices at which the query matches the given string

const { match } = require('fuzzaldrin-plus-fast')

match('Hello World', 'he')    // [0, 1]
match('Hello World', 'wor')   // [6, 7, 8]
match('Hello World', 'elwor') // [1, 2, 6, 7, 8]

wrap (string, query, options = {})

Gives an HTML/Markdown string that highlights the range for which the match happens

wrap("helloworld", "he")  

helloworld

wrap("Hello world", "he")

Hello world

options

In all the above functions, you can pass an optional object with the following keys

{
    /** only for `filter` function */
    /** The key to use when candidates is an object */
    key?: T extends string ? never : keyof T

    /** only for `filter` function */
    maxResults?: number

    /** @default false */
    allowErrors?: boolean

    /** @default true */
    usePathScoring?: boolean

    /** @default false */
    useExtensionBonus?: boolean

    pathSeparator?: '/' | '\\' | string
}

New()

Initializes the native binding

const { New } = require('fuzzaldrin-plus-fast')
New()

Info for Developers

How to release the package to npm?

• Bump up version in package.json.
• Create a new release tag in Github, for the bumped version. This should trigger builds in GitHub Actions. The binaries will be uploaded to the action's page.
• Manually download the prebuilt binaries from GitHub and publish.

npm publish