Greetings,
Which gems are good for searching textual data? I had a look into searchlogic but it appears to just dynamically create SQL LIKE statements, I’d like something that provides better/more relevant results to the user.
Thanks,
Russell
Greetings,
Which gems are good for searching textual data? I had a look into searchlogic but it appears to just dynamically create SQL LIKE statements, I’d like something that provides better/more relevant results to the user.
For a quick search (find author by name), often that's all that you need. But for more complex contextual searching, that's going to depend a lot on the database you're using. MySQL has a full-text search method, but it only works on MYISAM tables, so that means no transaction support. Other databases have similar systems, I'm sure.
Usually you step a few layers above that and use something like Sphinx or Solr to index your content, and then ask those search services for the answers you need. There are plenty of gems around both of those search engines, too. Have a look here: Category: Rails Search - The Ruby Toolbox
Walter
Thanks, I'll have a look into those.
I highly recommend checking out Sunspot (http://outoftime.github.com/ sunspot/). Very easy to set up, fast searching and lots of ways to tweak the results you get for relevance.
--Matt Jones
