Sphinx Search

[orban]

Yeah maybe --rotate doesn't work when you create them first time.

[ALanJay]

Curiously when I added anither database to the config file that sphinx database also refused to rotate just creating .new files looks like some kind of bug.

On another track has anyone tried accessing the sphinx searchd from another host?

I tried using the php api and at first test it refused to connect from a remote host but works when on the same machine (but referencing an IP address rather than localhost).

[orban]

Firewall?

That rotate seems to be bugged mm...yeah..just if you have a new config file entry just create that one alone...without --rotate, first time.

[ALanJay]

Originally Posted by orban

Firewall?

Turned out that as well as a place holder in sphinxapi.php the "localhost" was also hard coded into the test.php code provided

Originally Posted by orban

That rotate seems to be bugged mm...yeah..just if you have a new config file entry just create that one alone...without --rotate, first time.

Yes it is very odd. With the new database that I have added if I don't use --rotate it overwrites the current file but if I use --rotate it creates .new files (even subsequently). The other files are still in place and rotate correctly when I install the DELTA files on the main forum databases every 5 minutes.

So as you say a bit confising but other than that pretty impressive

An update to this - I relised that maye the problem is that searchd needs to be fuly restarted to re-read the config file before it knows about the new files and allows them to be rotated.

Starting a new data set in Sphinx seems to require:

1) creating without the --rotate flag
2) Stopping searchd completly (kill `cat /var/log/searchd.pid`)
3) restarting searchd with the updated config file sphinx.conf

After those changes things seem to once again work.

Hi another update / query

Well having managed to get sphinx up and running and the test.php element searching the data we thought we would try the next steps.

Unfortunately we are still using 3.0.x and the search.php has changed a huge amount

I don't suppose anyone has tried adding sphinx search to 3.0.x?

Looking at the changes suggested I can find c1 and c2 - though the variable names have changed along with c4 and c5.

Obviously with the variable name changes oban your very useful sphinx.php will need various changes to the variables.

But if anyone has tried this with 3.0.x please let me know

[ALanJay]

Hi another update / comment / query

We seem to have managed to get things working with 3.0.x but when testing see:

Warning: assert() [function.assert]: Assertion failed in /includes/sphinxapi.php on line 209

This doesn't seem to be fatal in any way and the search function works any ideas what this is trying to achieve

Overall thanks to Oban for the code to make this all work it seems to do an excellent job.

[orban]

What's on line 209?

[ALanJay]

Hi,

Well further to the above doing various test searches which all seem to produce the correct results I have discovered a couple more of these anomalies

when I set various search options - ie user or forums or date as well as text search I get these errors in sphinxapi.php there are various assertion test ie

line 209:

assert ( is_int($limit) );

line 234

/// set groups
function SetGroups ( $groups )
{
assert ( is_array($groups) );
foreach ( $groups as $group )
assert ( is_int($group) );

$this->_groups = $groups;
}

It looks like the defaults set in sphinx.php line 75

$cl = new SphinxClient ();
$cl->SetServer ( $sphinx_server, $sphinx_port );
$cl->SetWeights ( $sphinx_weights );
$cl->SetLimits ( 0, $vboptions['maxresults'] );
$cl->SetMatchMode ( SPH_MATCH_ALL );
$cl->SetGroups ( $sphinx_groups );
$cl->SetGroups2 ( $sphinx_groups2 );
$cl->SetGroups3 ( $sphinx_groups3 );
$cl->SetGroups4 ( $sphinx_groups4 );
$cl->SetGroups5 ( $sphinx_groups5 );
$cl->SetSortMode ( $sphinx_sort );

And before this some times for some searches they are set to strings line 52

$sphinx_forumid_group = 'group';
$sphinx_switch_group = 'group2'; //threadid
$sphinx_userid_group = 'group3';

This doesn't seem to effect the results but the assertion fails when the elements are not integers.

In the case of line 209 (sphinxapi.php) and line 75 (sphinx.php) these can be made to be (forced) to integers as they are obviously numbers ie

$cl->SetLimits ( intval(0), intval($vboptions['maxresults']) );

But I am not certain about the other elements and options which because the defaults are text strings don't work in the same way.

Anyway hope that helps.

By the way if anyone wants the recipe for using Sphinx with 3.0.X then let me know and I can remove my specific defaults and post it here. The biggest change is the recoding from OOP to the old style referencing of variables. But there always seem to be ones that meet the same requirements.

The only other things to spot are the changes to the search.php from the Vb code which follows the examples that Oban gave but obviously in slightly different locations in search.php ie

Make change c1 at around line 304
Make change c2 at around line 331
Make change c3 at around line 1210
Make change c4 at around line 1414
Make change c5 at around line 1147

sphinx.php see the diff file attached.

Once again very cool work Oban and we should also thank the Andrew Aksyonoff over at www.sphinxsearch.com

[ALanJay]

Hi,

Having done more research the warning errors can be switched off by adding:

assert_options(ASSERT_ACTIVE, 0); // 0 off or 1 on

At the top of the sphinxapi.php script. It might be better to stop the the reasons the warnings are being created but at least it gives on the option to see or not to see them.

Another curiosity is on our forum the searches all seem lighting quick EXCEPT when you look for exclusively the "thread started by user" this can take over a minute to give back a result.

If you add additional requests - limit the date / thread content / forums to search the time it takes is reduced.

Finally when searches are processed every one of them you see the redirect page to show that it is being processed when you do a "thread started by user" search you don't see that label so not sure if my changes to search.php have caused this anyone any ideas or does the same happen on 3.6.x?

Regards
ALan

[mute]

orban, did you ever fix the searching of post titles? I thought I was running your latest code, but it seems to be broken on my devel install.

[orban]

It also searches them in my latest version (you can set relevancy in the sphinx.php) but it doesn't quite work like the default vB search (yet).

ALanJay: I would not remove the asserts, because they might create invalid requests to the searchd. Also the being processed is a vB thing.