Sphinx PHP search

full-text-search, php, sphinx

Solution

You need to use the min_prefix_len index config option to tell sphinx that you want it to index and match on partial words. You'll probably also need to set enable_star to 1

http://www.sphinxsearch.com/docs/current.html#conf-min-prefix-len

index artists
{
 source     = artists
 path     = /var/sphinx/artists
 docinfo     = extern
 charset_type   = utf-8
 min_prefix_len   = 2
 enable_star   = 1
}

after enabling prefix indexing you'll be able to search for stuff like "50 Ce*" to get partial word matches. If you want partial word matches to be allowed without requiring your users to know about adding the * themselves you'll probably have to modify the search string programmatically before passing it to sphinx.

Problem

I'm doing a Sphinx search but turning up some really weird results. Any help is appreciated. So for example if I type "50", I get: - 50 Cent - 50 Lions - 50 Foot Wave, etc. This is great, but when I search "50 Ce", I get: - Ryczące Dwudziestki - Spisek - Bernhard Gal - Cowabunga Go-Go And other crazy results. Also when I search for "50 Cent", the correct result is at the top, but then random results below. Any ideas why? PHP code: ``` $query = $_GET['query']; if (!empty($query)) { $sphinx->SetMatchMode(SPH_MATCH_ALL); $sphinx->AddQuery($query, 'artists'); $sphinx->AddQuery($query, 'variations'); $sphinx->SetFilter('name', array(3)); $sphinx->SetLimits(0, 10); $result = $sphinx->RunQueries(); echo '<pre>'; switch ($result) { case false: echo 'Query failed: ' . $sphinx->GetLastError() . "\n"; break; default: if ($sphinx->GetLastWarning()) { echo 'WARNING: ' . $sphinx->GetLastWarning() . "\n"; } if (is_array($result[0]['matches']) && count($result[0]['matches'])) { foreach ($result[0]['matches'] as $value => $info) { $artist = artistDetails($value); echo $artist['name'] . "\n"; } } } } ``` Sphinx Index and Source: ``` source artists { type = mysql sql_host = localhost sql_user = user sql_pass = pass sql_db = db sql_port = 3300 sql_query = \ SELECT \ id, name \ FROM artists; #UNIX_TIMESTAMP(time) #sql_attr_uint = group_id #sql_attr_timestamp = time sql_query_info = SELECT id,name FROM artists WHERE id=$id } index artists { source = artists path = /var/sphinx/artists docinfo = extern charset_type = utf-8 } ```

Original source