Sphinx Search

[weeno]

anyone interested in modifying the "similar thread" search feature to utilize sphinx?

arn

[weinstoc]

Originally Posted by weeno

anyone interested in modifying the "similar thread" search feature to utilize sphinx?

arn

This brings up a (novice?) pre-install question for me. If I use Sphinx for searching my big board do I need to build the search index for similar threads to work? Does this use the fulltext index or the standard vB one? And if the fulltext one why bother with Sphinx. Won't the fulltext cause the load whether it's used for searching or similar threads?

Chuck

[weeno]

Originally Posted by weinstoc

This brings up a (novice?) pre-install question for me. If I use Sphinx for searching my big board do I need to build the search index for similar threads to work? Does this use the fulltext index or the standard vB one? And if the fulltext one why bother with Sphinx. Won't the fulltext cause the load whether it's used for searching or similar threads?

Well, i've never kept similar thread search on, but if you were to keep it on with a large db, I'd think it would cause the same problems as regular search.

I'm not sure I understand what your question is. But I guess my answer is I don't have similar threads on because it will hurt performance, but if sphinx is used, I could potentially turn it on.

arn

[weinstoc]

Originally Posted by weeno

Well, i've never kept similar thread search on, but if you were to keep it on with a large db, I'd think it would cause the same problems as regular search.

I'm not sure I understand what your question is. But I guess my answer is I don't have similar threads on because it will hurt performance, but if sphinx is used, I could potentially turn it on.

arn

Thank you. That was what I suspected.

Chuck

[eoc_Jason]

In the functions_search.php file, locate the fetch_similar_threads() function.

You can bypass the stock search code and pass it to sphinx. You can have sphinx return relevancy scores so it should work.

I do not know how often similar threads are updated. Are they created only when the inital thread is, or checked with every reply? If you have a really large forum your similar threads might get stale rather quickly (assuming they are only searched on thread creation).

I'm working on a big re-write of the sphinx / vB search. Basically making it act more like google (or any real search engine for that matter).... I'll be sure to add in a clause for the similar threads though just to be complete.

When it's done I'll probably post the code here.

[andrewkhunn]

Originally Posted by eoc_Jason

In the functions_search.php file, locate the fetch_similar_threads() function.

You can bypass the stock search code and pass it to sphinx. You can have sphinx return relevancy scores so it should work.

I do not know how often similar threads are updated. Are they created only when the inital thread is, or checked with every reply? If you have a really large forum your similar threads might get stale rather quickly (assuming they are only searched on thread creation).

I'm working on a big re-write of the sphinx / vB search. Basically making it act more like google (or any real search engine for that matter).... I'll be sure to add in a clause for the similar threads though just to be complete.

When it's done I'll probably post the code here.

Similar threads are only updated when the thread is created AFAIK. I have similar threads turned on with Sphinx, and I am pretty sure that Similar Threads is using FULLTEXT search with Sphinx ignoring everything it is doing currently.

Also, please code the aforementioned rewrite up with supprt for similar threads! This is hands-down the best mod for vBulletin right now and I can't imagine search being fixed before vBulletin 4.0 is released.

[mute]

So, vB 3.7 features are out and look pretty darn cool.

However, still no sphinx support. If you go onto vB.com and look at the search page, it's quite different, and I have a bad feeling that our existing sphinx "addon" as it is referred to will not cut the mustard for those who decide to upgrade to 3.7 as opposed to waiting for 4.0.

Here's a post I made:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showp...postcount=1697

Is it me, or were they sort of insinuating that they were going to support Sphinx unofficially (like memcache) in 4.0?

I'm at the point where come 3.7 I'd be willing to shell out some cash to get 100% of the vB search functionality (tags, find threads by user, find posts by user) all hitting sphinx.

[weeno]

I added a voice of support for sphinx in that thread.

I hope sphinx can get running in 3.7 easily.... as tags are another feature I have wanted for some time, and it looks very appealing.

Note that they seperated out tags from the search functionality in the most recent revision. So there's a separate tags.php file that handles it. Depending on how tags are implemented, this may be "ok" to keep separate and not need sphinx to take that functionality over.

arn

[amcd]

I am not upgrading to 3.7 until sphinx search is available. It is going to be the single greatest factor for the decision.

[mute]

Originally Posted by amcd

I am not upgrading to 3.7 until sphinx search is available. It is going to be the single greatest factor for the decision.

In thinking about it, it's going to be ours too. We have a ton of other customs tuff but that typically doesn't take much work to upgrade. The sphinx stuff is just something we can't live without. I wish jelsoft would release unofficial support for it, I'm sick of the existing bugs we're running into and I don't have the time to support it myself.