using thinking sphinx search in rails app

I am using acts_as_ferret and ferret server as of now with my rails application and it just works fine for me. The ONLY problem is performance as it takes a lot time to build index and to rebuild index when it gets screwed up and that’s where sphinx rocks!

To get started with thinking sphinx you need to install sphinx server first.
for installation help click here.

To use sphinx search in rails we need to use either thinking sphinx gem or plugin that can be easily find on github.

Plugin installation


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


OR

To install gem run the following command.


gem install thinking-sphinx

Successfully installed thinking-sphinx-1.3.16
1 gem installed

Edit environment file and add following lines to it inside initializer block.


config.gem(
'thinking-sphinx',
:lib => 'thinking_sphinx',
:version => '1.3.16'
)

Edit Rakefile and add following lines to it.

require 'thinking_sphinx/tasks'

List rake task that should show up sphinx related tasks.


rake -T ts
(in /home/sandip/v1)
rake doc:plugins:acts_as_audited # Generate documentation for the acts_as_...
rake doc:plugins:acts_as_ferret # Generate documentation for the acts_as_...
rake rails:update:javascripts # Update your javascripts from your curre...
rake rails:update:scripts # Add new scripts to the application scri...
rake stats # Report code statistics (KLOCs, etc) fro...
rake test:units # Run tests for unitsdb:test:prepare / Ru...
rake tmp:sockets:clear # Clears all files in tmp/sockets
rake ts:conf # Generate the Sphinx configuration file ...
rake ts:config # Generate the Sphinx configuration file ...
rake ts:in # Index data for Sphinx using Thinking Sp...
rake ts:rebuild # Stop Sphinx (if it's running), rebuild ...
rake ts:reindex # Reindex Sphinx without regenerating the...
rake ts:restart # Restart Sphinx / Restart Sphinx
rake ts:run # Stop if running, then start a Sphinx se...
rake ts:start # Start a Sphinx searchd daemon using Thi...
rake ts:stop # Stop Sphinx using Thinking Sphinx's set...
rake ts:version # Output the current Thinking Sphinx vers...

Start sphinx server this should give up an error.

rake ts:start
(in /home/sandip/v1)
Failed to start searchd daemon. Check /home/sandip/v1/log/searchd.log.

Adding indexes in models

define_index do
# following fields are database fields
# we can not add model methods in sphinx index
# sphinx fields allows ONLY model based associations
# fields
indexes customer_name
indexes phone
indexes mobile
indexes other_phone
indexes car_make
indexes car_model
indexes registration_no
end

Configure sphinx

rake ts:config
Generating Configuration to /home/sandip/v1/config/development.sphinx.conf

Index sphinx

rake ts:in
(in /home/sandip/v1)
Generating Configuration to /home/sandip/v1/config/development.sphinx.conf
Sphinx 0.9.8-rc2 (r1234)
Copyright (c) 2001-2008, Andrew Aksyonoff

using config file '/home/sandip/v1/config/development.sphinx.conf'...
indexing index 'call_core'...
collected 113521 docs, 2.1 MB
collected 0 attr values
sorted 0.1 Mvalues, 100.0% done
sorted 0.3 Mhits, 100.0% done
total 113521 docs, 2114790 bytes
total 3.628 sec, 582909.70 bytes/sec, 31290.34 docs/sec
distributed index 'call' can not be directly indexed; skipping.

Search using sphinx

./script console

>>Call.search 'sandip'
=> [#, #]


It returns array of records found. conditions are allowed by sphinx. If you need to add conditions on integer attributes then index block in model needs to have has method like author_id in following.


define_index do
indexes content
indexes :name, :sortable => true
indexes comments.content, :as => :comment_content
indexes [author.first_name, author.last_name], :as => :author_name

has author_id, created_at
end