NAME

Search::Xapian - Perl XS frontend to the Xapian C++ search library.

SYNOPSIS

  use Search::Xapian;

  my $db = Search::Xapian::Database->new( '[DATABASE DIR]' );
  my $enq = $db->enquire( '[QUERY TERM]' );

  printf "Running query '%s'\n", $enq->get_query()->get_description();

  my @matches = $enq->matches(0, 10);

  print scalar(@matches) . " results found\n";

  foreach my $match ( @matches ) {
    my $doc = $match->get_document();
    printf "ID %d %d%% [ %s ]\n", $match->get_docid(), $match->get_percent(), $doc->get_data();
  }

DESCRIPTION

This module wraps most methods of most Xapian classes. The missing classes and methods should be added in the future. It also provides a simplified, more 'perlish' interface - as demonstrated above.

The Xapian library is evolving very quickly at the time of writing, hence any documentation placed here would be likely to become out of date quite rapidly, and I do not have the patience to write some which could rapidly become redundant.

Apologies to those of you considering using this module. For the time being, I would suggest garnering what you can from the tests and examples provided, or reading through the Xapian documentation on http://www.xapian.org/, notably the API documentation at http://www.xapian.org/docs/apidoc/html/annotated.html

If you encounter problems, email either me or preferably the Xapian-discuss mailing list (which I am on - subscription details can be found on the Xapian web site).

EXPORT

None by default.

:db

DB_OPEN

Open a database, fail if database doesn't exist.

DB_CREATE

Create a new database, fail if database exists.

DB_CREATE_OR_OPEN

open the existing database, without destorying data, or create new.

DB_CREATE_OR_OVERWRITE

overwrite database if it exists

:ops

OP_AND

Match if both subqueries are satisfied

OP_OR

Match if either subquery is satisfied.

OP_AND_NOT

Match if left but not right subquery is satisfied.

OP_XOR

Match if left or right, but not both queries are satisfied.

OP_AND_MAYBE

Match if left is satisfied, but use weights from both.

OP_FILTER

Like OP_AND, but only weight using the left query.

OP_NEAR

Match if the words are near eachother. The window should be specified, as a parameter to Search::Xapian::Query::Query. but it defaults to the number of terms in the list.

OP_PHRASE

Match as a phrase (All words in order).

OP_ELITE_SET

Select an elite set from the subqueries, and perform a query with these combined as an OR query.

:standard

Standard is db + ops

TODO

Error Handling

Error handling for all methods liable to generate them.

Documentation

Brief descriptions of classes, possibly just adapted from Xapian docs.

Unwrapped classes

The following Xapian classes are not yet wrapped: Error (and subclasses), ErrorHandler, ExpandDecider (and subclasses), MatchDecider, Weight (and subclasses).

Unwrapped methods

The following methods are not yet wrapped: Enquire::get_eset(...) with more than two arguments, Enquire::get_mset(...) with more than two arguments, Enquire::register_match_decider(...) with one argument, Enquire::set_weighting_scheme(const Weight &weight); Query::Query(tname, ...); with more than one argument, Query itor ctor optional "parameter" parameter, Remote::open(...), static Stem::get_available_languages().

We wrap ESet::back(), MSet::swap() and MSet::operator[](), but not MSet::back(), ESet::swap(), ESet::operator[]().

Tie MSet and ESet to allow them to just be used as lists?

CREDITS

Thanks to Tye McQueen <tye@metronet.com> for explaining the finer points of how best to write XS frontends to C++ libraries, James Aylett <james@tartarus.org> for clarifying the less obvious aspects of the Xapian API, Tim Brody for patches wrapping ::QueryParser and ::Stopper and especially Olly Betts <olly@survex.com> for contributing advice, bugfixes, and wrapper code for the more obscure classes.

AUTHOR

Alex Bowley <kilinrax@cpan.org>

SEE ALSO

perl. xapian.