Ruby on Rails : Thinking Sphinx : Search Engine (gem)

Sphinx is a very fast search engine that indexes data and provides flexible ways of searching it. Thinking Sphinx allows you to link up your models into Sphinx simply and painlessly -– because let’s face it, searching across multiple fields using SQL is a pain in the neck.

Step by step install Sphinx.

Basic files need to edit and according files to apply the function :
1. /config/environment.rb
2. /config/sphinx.yml
3. /app/controllers/articles_controller.rb
4. /app/models/article.rb
5. /app/views/articles/index.rhtml
6. /app/views/articles/_searchResult.rhtml

1. Add few line to /config/environment.rb

Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
  config.gem(
  'thinking-sphinx',
  :lib     => 'thinking_sphinx/0.9.8',
  :version => '1.3.3'
  ) 
end

2. /config/sphinx.yml

development:
  enable_star: 1
  min_infix_len: 1
test:
  enable_star: 1
  min_infix_len: 1
production:
  enable_star: 1
  min_infix_len: 1

3. /app/controllers/articles_controller.rb

class ArticlesController < ApplicationController
 def SphinxSearch
   @articles = Article.search '*book*', :with => {
              :created_at => 8.week.ago..Time.now,
   }

   render :partial => 'searchResult', :collection => @articles
 end
end

4. /app/models/article.rb

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
 define_index do
    # search from articles db table
    indexes title, :sortable => true, :facet => true
    indexes author, :sortable => true, :facet => true
    indexes type, :sortable => true, :facet => true

 # search from publishers db table
 indexes publishers(:name), :as => :publishers_name, :sortable => true

 # search from books db table
 indexes books(:description), :as => :books_description, :sortable => true
 
 end
end

** When you make changes to your Sphinx index structure, you will need to stop and start Sphinx for these changes to take effect, as well as re-index the data. This is all wrapped up into a single task:

rake thinking_sphinx:rebuild
rake ts:rebuild

5. /app/views/articles/index.rhtml

<% form_remote_tag(:url => {:action => 'SphinxSearch'}, 
  :update => "resultList") do %>
 <%= submit_tag 'Search' %>
 <% end %>

 <div id="resultList">
  <!-- Search Result will be displayed here -->
 </div>

6. /app/views/articles/_searchResult.rhtml

<% if articles.length != 0 %>
 <% for article in articles %>
  Id : <%= article.id %><br>
  Author : <%= article.author %><br>
  Type : <%= article.type %><hr>
 <% end %>
<% else %>
No record found!
<% end %>

Sphinx
http://www.sphinxsearch.com/

Ultrasphinx
http://blog.evanweaver.com/files/doc/fauna/ultrasphinx/files/README.html

Thinking Sphinx
http://freelancing-god.github.com/ts/en/
http://groups.google.com/group/thinking-sphinx