Presentation from OSDC 2008 in Sydney, on using Sphinx with Rails. The sldes don't work that well without the talk though, but it may be useful as a reference, I guess.

1. Sphinx on Rails

2. Fast and Painless
Full-Text Searching

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

4. Searching can be
ugly...

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

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

7. ... very ugly

8. Sphinx to the
rescue!

9. Indexes
Documents

10. Queries
Document
Indexes

11. Similar to:
• Lucene • Xapian
•Ferret •Solr

12. MySQL

13. PostgreSQL

14. XML

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

16. Ruby

17. Ruby on Rails

18. How?

19. acts as sphinx

20. Sphincter

21. Ultrasphinx

22. Thinking Sphinx

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

24. class User < ActiveRecord::Base
#
end

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

26. rake thinking_sphinx:index
rake thinking_sphinx:start

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

28. User.search quot;queryquot;

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

30. User.search quot;one twoquot;,
:match_mode => :any

31. Wait! You forgot
something...

32. Pagination

33. @users = User.search quot;queryquot;

34. <%= will_paginate @users %>

35. @users = User.search quot;queryquot;,
:page => (params[:page] || 0)

36. Sorting

37. Attributes != Fields

38. Fields are for
Searching

39. Attributes are for
Filtering and
Sorting

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

41. User.search quot;Melbournequot;,
:order => :created_at

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

43. User.search quot;Melbournequot;,
:order => :last_name

44. Filtering

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

46. User.search quot;Melbournequot;,
:with => {:active => 1}

47. User.search quot;Melbournequot;,
:with => {
:created_at => (
1.year.ago..Time.now
)
}

48. User.search :conditions => {
:first_name => quot;Patquot;
}

49. Weighting

50. User.search quot;Melbournequot;,
:field_weights => {
quot;first_namequot; => 10,
quot;last_namequot; => 10,
quot;locationquot; => 5
}

51. class User < ActiveRecord::Base
define_index do
# ...
set_property :field_weights => {
quot;first_namequot; => 10,
quot;last_namequot; => 10,
quot;locationquot; => 5
}
end
end

52. Indexing
Everything

53. Sphinx lets
you dig your
own grave

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

55. Complex SQL =
Slower Indexing

56. Searching
Everything

57. ThinkingSphinx::Search.search(
quot;queryquot;
)

58. Geo-location
Searching

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

60. rake thinking_sphinx:stop
rake thinking_sphinx:index
rake thinking_sphinx:start

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

62. What’s the catch?

63. Sphinx is a bit
all-or-nothing

64. User.create(
:first_name => quot;Patquot;,
:last_name => quot;Allanquot;
)

65. User.search quot;Patquot; #=> []

66. rake thinking_sphinx:index

67. rake thinking_sphinx:index

68. δ to the rescue

69. δelta to the rescue

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

71. rake thinking_sphinx:stop
rake thinking_sphinx:index
rake thinking_sphinx:start

72. User.create(
:first_name => quot;Patquot;,
:last_name => quot;Allanquot;
)

73. User.search quot;Patquot;
# => [#<User ...>]

74. So err, what just
happened?

75. core

76. δelta

77. core δelta

78. rake thinking_sphinx:index

79. core

80. Merb?

81. ActiveRecord

82. DataMapper?

83. Soon!

84. Well Soon-ish

85. Okay, I’ll stop
talking now...

86. Questions?