Using the Zend framework Lucene library

Adding a site search function

I know, only a few articles in, so I don’t really need a site search function.  But you never know, I might actually keep writing (even if no-one is reading) and so I’ve been looking around for some solutions.

I’ve looked at a few, for example: Swish-e, and Sphider.  Nothing really float my boat, until I had a look at the Zend Framework.  It’s another MVC based PHP framework, though it looks a little heavier than CodeIgniter.  The documentation is not as good either, but it did have a Lucene library.

I found a way of incorporating a Zend framework class as a CodeIgniter library here by Fred Wu.  Nice work Fred, thanks.

As Fred suggests, copy the Zend folder from the framework library to application/libraries/ in your CodeIgniter installation.  I discovered that I only needed the Zend/Search folder, and the Zend/Exception.php file.

Continuing Fred’s instructions, create a Zend.php library file with the code posted on his blog page.  Now we can get started.

Create a directory for the index.  In my example code I created a directory called application/search.  Now we can create a controller called search.php that will contain some simple create, and search methods:

<?php
class Search extends MY_Controller {
 
	function Search()
	{
		parent::MY_Controller();
 
		$this->load->library('zend', 'Zend/Search/Lucene');
	}
 
	function create()
	{
		// This method should be authenticated, or removed once the index is created.
		// TODO: Some sort of site spidering process to add the entire site to the index.
 
		$index = Zend_Search_Lucene::create(APPPATH . 'search/index');
 
    		$doc = Zend_Search_Lucene_Document_Html::loadHTMLFile('http://www.andrewrowland.com');
 
    		$index->addDocument($doc);
 
		echo '<p>Index created</p>';
	}
 
	function index()
	{
		// TODO: Create an index method that contains a search form.
	}
 
	function result()
	{
		// Hardcoded search result example.
		// TODO: Take a user search query, and expand the result summary
 
		$index = Zend_Search_Lucene::open(APPPATH . 'search/index');
 
		$data['results'] = $index->find('andrew');
 
		$this->load->view('search_result_view', $data);		
	}
}
?>

I didn’t bother with the create index view, as all that is needed is a simple message explaining that the index is created.  The search_result_view.php view will display the results:

<html>
<head>
	<title>Search example</title>
</head>
<body>
 
<ul>
	<?php foreach($results as $result):?>
	<li><?php echo $result->title;?></li>
	<?php endforeach;?>
</ul>
 
</body>
</html>

As you can see, I’ve noted a few TODO’s.  Might add a bit of jQuery action (because I’m worth it) in there to.  Weekend coming up, so I’ll expand on this next week.

Back to articles 2008-05-23 19:20:34 UTC

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