Sphinx on Rails

Fast and Painless
Full-Text Searching

Pat Allan
http://freelancing-gods.com
http://twitter.com/pat

Searching can be
ugly...

SELECT *
FROM users
WHERE first_name LIKE '%query%'
OR last_name LIKE '%query%'
OR email LIKE '%query%'
OR location LIKE '%query%';

SELECT *
FROM users
WHERE (first_name LIKE '%one%'
OR first_name LIKE '%two%')
OR (last_name LIKE '%one%'
OR last_name LIKE '%two%')
...

... very ugly

Sphinx to the
rescue!

Indexes
Documents

Queries
Document
Indexes

Similar to:
• Lucene • Xapian
•Ferret •Solr

MySQL

PostgreSQL

XML

• C
• Perl
•C++
•PHP
•C#
•Python
•Java
•Ruby
•Haskell

Ruby

Ruby on Rails

How?

acts as sphinx

Sphincter

Ultrasphinx

Thinking Sphinx

script/plugin install
git://github.com/freelancing-god/
thinking-sphinx.git

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
#
end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
define_index do
indexes first_name
indexes last_name
indexes email
indexes location
end
end

rake thinking_sphinx:index
rake thinking_sphinx:start

SELECT *
FROM users
WHERE first_name LIKE '%query%'
OR last_name LIKE '%query%'
OR email LIKE '%query%'
OR location LIKE '%query%';

User.search \"query\"

SELECT *
FROM users
WHERE (first_name LIKE '%one%'
OR first_name LIKE '%two%')
OR (last_name LIKE '%one%'
OR last_name LIKE '%two%')
...

User.search \"one two\",
:match_mode => :any

Wait! You forgot
something...

Pagination

@users = User.search \"query\"

<%= will_paginate @users %>

@users = User.search \"query\",
:page => (params[:page] || 0)

Sorting

Attributes != Fields

Fields are for
Searching

Attributes are for
Filtering and
Sorting

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
define_index do
# ...
has created_at
end
end

User.search \"Melbourne\",
:order => :created_at

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
define_index do
# ...
indexes last_name,
:sortable => true
# ...
end
end

User.search \"Melbourne\",
:order => :last_name

Filtering

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
define_index do
# ...
has active
end
end

User.search \"Melbourne\",
:with => {:active => 1}

User.search \"Melbourne\",
:with => {
:created_at => (
1.year.ago..Time.now
)
}

User.search :conditions => {
:first_name => \"Pat\"
}

Weighting

User.search \"Melbourne\",
:field_weights => {
\"first_name\" => 10,
\"last_name\" => 10,
\"location\" => 5
}

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
define_index do
# ...
set_property :field_weights => {
\"first_name\" => 10,
\"last_name\" => 10,
\"location\" => 5
}
end
end

Indexing
Everything

Sphinx lets
you dig your
own grave

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :articles
define_index do
indexes articles.subject,
:as => :subjects
# ...
end
end

Complex SQL =
Slower Indexing

Searching
Everything

ThinkingSphinx::Search.search(
\"query\"
)

Geo-location
Searching

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
define_index do
# ...
has lat, lng
end
end

rake thinking_sphinx:stop
rake thinking_sphinx:index
rake thinking_sphinx:start

User.search :geo => [
-0.591376, 2.638356
]

What’s the catch?

Sphinx is a bit
all-or-nothing

User.create(
:first_name => \"Pat\",
:last_name => \"Allan\"
)

User.search \"Pat\" #=> []

rake thinking_sphinx:index

rake thinking_sphinx:index

δ to the rescue

δelta to the rescue

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
define_index do
# ...
set_property :delta => true
end
end

rake thinking_sphinx:stop
rake thinking_sphinx:index
rake thinking_sphinx:start

User.create(
:first_name => \"Pat\",
:last_name => \"Allan\"
)

User.search \"Pat\"
# => [#<User ...>]

So err, what just
happened?

core

δelta

core δelta

rake thinking_sphinx:index

core

Merb?

ActiveRecord

DataMapper?

Soon!

Well Soon-ish

Okay, I’ll stop
talking now...

Questions?