Working with Thinking_Sphinx

So now that Sphinx and Thinking_Sphinx are installed (right?), we can get on with actually using this stuff.

If you missed the post on installing Thinking_Sphinx, you can read it here. The post about installing Sphinx itself is here. And if you haven't yet watched the RailsCast about this, you need to do that!

Note that there are other Sphinx plugins for RoR, but based on all the stuff I've read on the web, I've chosen to use Thinking_Sphinx. We'll see how that decision pans out over the next few posts.

The first thing we need to do is generate the configuration file that Sphinx will use. To do that, I'll open the cmd windows, navigate to the root of my project and type

rake thinking_sphinx:configure

This should put out a file under our project\config directory named development.sphinx.conf. If that file isn't there, we've messed something up. The cmd output for the rake task should point to the issue. At this point, I'll assume that we've gotten this file created seccessfully.

Next, we'll need to specify some indexes in our models. Let's assume that we have an Entity model with the fields "firstname" and "lastname" (which I do). In our entity.rb model file, we'll add the following code:

entity.rb

class Entity < ActiveRecord::Base
  define_index do
    indexes firstname
    indexes lastname
  end
end

This should allow Sphinx to index the firstname and lastname fields of the entities table.

Now we'll need to generate the indexes. So we open the cmd window and type:

rake ts:index

This could take a few minutes if the dataset is very large. When it's done, it should have created some files in the project\db\sphinx\development directory. Mine are named entity_core.s*. Note that it would be a good idea to actually have the tables indexed in MySQL as Sphinx uses those indexes to retrieve data. From the docs it doesn't appear necessary, but will make the searching faster.

It's time to start the Sphinx service. In the cmd window we type:

rake ts:start

The Sphinx server should now be started. Now we can set up a search page and see if it works.

For simplicity, because we're just testing concepts here, I've set up a Home controller with its associated parts and pieces. The Home index page is my root page. I've put the search form in this page.

Here's a pastie of the relevent code. (yes, I'd like to show this code inline here, but I haven't figured that out yet. I'd appreciate any hints!)

You'll notice it's all very simple, basic stuff. I haven't even broken a sweat yet!

If we load the home page and type something into the search box and click the "Search" button, we're greeted with the search results. Rock on! This worked like a champ and wasn't very difficult at all. RoR kicks arse!

Next, we'll be dealing with pagination. Thinking_Sphinx automatically works with the will_paginate plugin. Here's the RailsCast on that one. Bone up and we'll muddle through that next time.

See ya next post!

Chris