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

- SYNOPSIS
- DESCRIPTION

- EXPORT

- :db
- :ops
- :qpflags
- :qpstem
- :enq_order
- :standard
- Version functions
- Numeric encoding functions
- TODO
- CREDITS
- AUTHOR
- SEE ALSO

# 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 to some common operations, as demonstrated above.

There are some gaps in the POD documentation for wrapped classes, but you can read the Xapian C++ API documentation at http://xapian.org/docs/apidoc/html/annotated.html for details of these. Alternatively, take a look at the code in the examples and tests.

If you want to use Search::Xapian and the threads module together, make sure you're using Search::Xapian >= 1.0.4.0 and Perl >= 5.8.7. As of 1.0.4.0, Search::Xapian uses CLONE_SKIP to make sure that the perl wrapper objects aren't copied to new threads - without this the underlying C++ objects can get destroyed more than once.

If you encounter problems, or have any comments, suggestions, patches, etc please email the Xapian-discuss mailing list (details of which can be found at http://xapian.org/lists).

## 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 an existing database, without destroying data, or create a new database if one doesn't already exist.

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 each other. 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.

OP_VALUE_RANGE

  Filter by a range test on a document value.

# :qpflags

FLAG_DEFAULT

  This gives the QueryParser default flag settings, allowing you to easily add flags to the default ones.

FLAG_BOOLEAN

  Support AND, OR, etc and bracketted subexpressions.

FLAG_LOVEHATE

  Support + and -.

FLAG_PHRASE

  Support quoted phrases.

FLAG_BOOLEAN_ANY_CASE

  Support AND, OR, etc even if they aren't in ALLCAPS.

FLAG_WILDCARD

  Support right truncation (e.g. Xap*).

FLAG_PURE_NOT

  Allow queries such as 'NOT apples'.

  These require the use of a list of all documents in the database which is potentially expensive, so this feature isn't enabled by default.

FLAG_PARTIAL

  Enable partial matching.

  Partial matching causes the parser to treat the query as a "partially entered" search. This will automatically treat the final word as a wildcarded match, unless it is followed by whitespace, to produce more stable results from interactive searches.

FLAG_SPELLING_CORRECTION
FLAG_SYNONYM
FLAG_AUTO_SYNONYMS
FLAG_AUTO_MULTIWORD_SYNONYMS

# :qpstem

STEM_ALL

  Stem all terms.

STEM_NONE

  Don't stem any terms.

STEM_SOME

  Stem some terms, in a manner compatible with Omega (capitalised words and those in phrases aren't stemmed).

# :enq_order

ENQ_ASCENDING

  docids sort in ascending order (default)

ENQ_DESCENDING

  docids sort in descending order

ENQ_DONT_CARE

  docids sort in whatever order is most efficient for the backend

# :standard

Standard is db + ops + qpflags + qpstem

# Version functions

major_version

  Returns the major version of the Xapian C++ library being used. E.g. for Xapian 1.0.9 this would return 1.

minor_version

  Returns the minor version of the Xapian C++ library being used. E.g. for Xapian 1.0.9 this would return 0.

revision

  Returns the revision of the Xapian C++ library being used. E.g. for Xapian 1.0.9 this would return 9. In a stable release series, Xapian libraries with the same minor and major versions are usually ABI compatible, so this often won't match the third component of $Search::Xapian::VERSION (which is the version of the Search::Xapian wrappers).

# Numeric encoding functions

sortable_serialise NUMBER

  Convert a floating point number to a string, preserving sort order.

  This method converts a floating point number to a string, suitable for using as a value for numeric range restriction, or for use as a sort key.

  The conversion is platform independent.

  The conversion attempts to ensure that, for any pair of values supplied to the conversion algorithm, the result of comparing the original values (with a numeric comparison operator) will be the same as the result of comparing the resulting values (with a string comparison operator). On platforms which represent doubles with the precisions specified by IEEE_754, this will be the case: if the representation of doubles is more precise, it is possible that two very close doubles will be mapped to the same string, so will compare equal.

  Note also that both zero and -zero will be converted to the same representation: since these compare equal, this satisfies the comparison constraint, but it's worth knowing this if you wish to use the encoding in some situation where this distinction matters.

  Handling of NaN isn't (currently) guaranteed to be sensible.

sortable_unserialise SERIALISED_NUMBER

  Convert a string encoded using sortable_serialise back to a floating point number.

  This expects the input to be a string produced by `sortable_serialise()`. If the input is not such a string, the value returned is undefined (but no error will be thrown).

  The result of the conversion will be exactly the value which was supplied to `sortable_serialise()` when making the string on platforms which represent doubles with the precisions specified by IEEE_754, but may be a different (nearby) value on other platforms.

# TODO

Error Handling

  Error handling for all methods liable to generate them.

Documentation

  Add POD documentation for all classes, where possible just adapted from Xapian docs.

Unwrapped classes

  The following Xapian classes are not yet wrapped: Error (and subclasses), ErrorHandler, ExpandDecider (and subclasses), user-defined weight classes.

  We don't yet wrap Xapian::BAD_VALUENO.

Unwrapped methods

  The following methods are not yet wrapped: Enquire::get_eset(...) with more than two arguments, Query ctor optional "parameter" parameter, Remote::open(...), static Stem::get_available_languages().

  We wrap MSet::swap() and MSet::operator[](), but not ESet::swap(), ESet::operator[](). Is swap actually useful? Should we instead 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>

Please report any bugs/suggestions to <xapian-discuss@lists.xapian.org> or use the Xapian bug tracker http://xapian.org/bugs. Please do NOT use the CPAN bug tracker or mail any of the authors individually.

# SEE ALSO

the Search::Xapian::BM25Weight manpage, the Search::Xapian::BoolWeight manpage, the Search::Xapian::Database manpage, the Search::Xapian::Document manpage, the Search::Xapian::Enquire manpage, the Search::Xapian::MultiValueSorter manpage, the Search::Xapian::PositionIterator manpage, the Search::Xapian::PostingIterator manpage, the Search::Xapian::QueryParser manpage, the Search::Xapian::Stem manpage, the Search::Xapian::TermGenerator manpage, the Search::Xapian::TermIterator manpage, the Search::Xapian::TradWeight manpage, the Search::Xapian::ValueIterator manpage, the Search::Xapian::Weight manpage, the Search::Xapian::WritableDatabase manpage, and http://xapian.org/.