[thelist] Site Search Script

David Kaufman david at gigawatt.com
Mon Nov 17 10:21:24 CST 2008


Hi Trav,

"Trav" <rabbit_fufu at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks for the reply.  I was thinking of google - but it turns
> out they want a script that'll run all on their server.  Nothing
> from the outside.  Any ideas?

We set up a client with a Google Mini search appliance last year, and it 
was a pleasure to work with!  Fast, easy to customize, entirely 
self-contained and, best of all.. it Just Worked!  See? 
http://www.bowhuntingmag.com/


But if your client doesn'twant to buy anything (so many of them don't), 
much less an expensive little yellow googlebox, then I'd recommend Xapian: 
http://xapian.org/

Xapian is an "engine", a back-end search indexing library though, not an 
application.  To implement your search, you need an implementation, a 
search script that talks to the Xapian system.  The Omega app on their 
homepage is the reference implementation and, by all accounts, blazingly 
fast and easy to use -- I've never used it myself.  I prefer to use the 
perl bindings and roll my own.

perl's popular Glimpse and Catalyst systems also integrate nicely with 
Xapian.  Of course if you don't do perl, then check the Xapian bindings for 
your language of choice -- chances are, someone's already built an open 
source xapian search using it!

-dave





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