Differences between revisions 9 and 155 (spanning 146 versions)

CompleteSearch

Old Wiki from the MPII (lots of detailed / internal information)

Quick Intro

Follow these steps to checkout the CompleteSearch code from our SVN, build it, build an index, run a server on that index, and ask queries to that server via HTTP. Don't be afraid, it's easy. If you have questions, send an email to Hannah Bast <bast@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>.

0. Get source code

svn checkout
http://ad-svn.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/completesearch/codebase
Username: [ask us]
Password: [ask us]

1. Compile

make all

This will build three binaries:

buildIndex
buildDocsDB
startCompletionServer

If you call any of these binaries without parameters you will get usage info with all the available options.

2. Input (to be produced by a suitable parser)

Ínput 1: a file <base-name>.words, with lines of the form

<word><TAB><doc id><TAB><score><TAB><position>

This file must be sorted such that sort -c -k1,1 -k2,2n -k4,4n does not complain.

Input 2: a file <base-name>.docs, with lines of the form

This file must be sorted so that sort -c -k1,1n does not complain.

You find a very simple example under http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~bast/topsecret/example.tgz

3. Build the word index

buildIndex HYB <base-name>.words

This produces the (binary) index file <base-name>.hybrid. It enables fast processing of the powerful query language offered by CompleteSearch (including full-text search, prefix search and completion, synonym search, error-tolerant search, etc.).

buildIndex also produces the file <base-name>.vocabulary that provides the mapping from word ids to words. This is an ASCII file, you can just look at it.

Note that by default, the HYB index is built with block of fixed sizes. It is more efficient though to pass it an explicit list of block boundaries (-B option). TODO: say something about this here, it's actually quite easy.

4. Build the doc index

buildDocsDB <name>.docs

This produces the (binar) file <base-name>.docs.DB which provides an efficient mapping from doc ids to documents. This is needed if you want to show excerpts / snippets from documents matching the query (which is almost always the case).

5. Start server

startCompletionServer -Z <base-name>.hybrid

This starts the server. If you run it without argument, it prints usage information and shows you the (very many) command line options. The -Z argument lets the server run in the foreground, and output everything to the console, which is convenient for testing. The default mode is to run as a background process and write all output to a log file.

6. Queries

The server listens on the port you specified in step 6 (8888 by default), and speaks HTTP. For example:

curl "http://localhost:8888/?q=die*&h=1&c=3"

This will return the result as an XML, which should be self-explanatory.

Here is the list of parameters which you may pass along with the query (q=...)

h : number of hits
c : number of completions (of last query word, if you put a * behind it)
f : send hits starting from this one (default: 0)
en : number of excerpts per hit
er : size of excerpt
rd : how to rank the documents (0 = by score, 1 = by doc id, 2 = by word id, append a or d for ascending or descending)
rw : how to rank the words (0 = by score, 1 = by doc count, 2 = by occurrence count, 3 = by word id, 4 = by doc id, append a or d as above)
s : how to aggregate scores (expert option, ignore for the moment)
format : one of xml, json, jsonp. Return result in that format.

-  ⇤ ← Revision 9 as of 2007-05-28 15:02:22 → 
  Size: 1703
  Editor: dslb-084-058-237-229
  Comment:
+   ← Revision 155 as of 2012-01-25 20:54:49 → ⇥
  Size: 3913
  Editor: Hannah Bast
  Comment:
-Deletions are marked like this.
+Additions are marked like this.
 Line 1:
-= About character encoding =
+#acl All:read
 Line 3:
-CompletionSearch supports ISO-8859-1 and the multibyte character encoding UTF-8.
UTF-8 is the default encoding with the following consequences:
+= CompleteSearch =
-Line 6:
+Line 5:
- * The $AC->settings->encoding is 'utf-8' unless overriden in autocomplete_config.php
 * The texts in text.php are saved as UTF-8
 * The css file uses '@charset "utf-8";'
 * We use mb_strtolower (instead of strtolower) with parameter $AC->settings->encoding to enable utf-8
+[[MpiiWiki|Old Wiki from the MPII]] (lots of detailed / internal information)
-Line 11:
+Line 7:
-We do the following depending on the defined encoding:
 * We UTF-8 encode $AC->settings->capitals if $AC->settings->encoding is UTF-8
 * In ajax.php we UTF-8 encode the query string if $AC->settings->encoding is UTF-8 and the charset of content_type is not UTF-8 (means the request is sent as a non-UTF-8 type)
 * We set the page encoding of index.php, options.php and change_options.php according to $AC->settings->encoding
(<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=<?php echo $AC->settings->encoding; ?>">
)
 * Texts from text.php are UTF-8 decoded by $AC->get_text() if $AC->settings->encoding is ISO-8859-1
 * We url encode the javascript code in function javascript_rhs (in generate_javascript.php) if $AC->settings->encoding is not UTF-8 (this is not necessary if utf-8 is used)
+== Quick Intro ==
-Line 20:
+Line 9:
+Follow these steps to checkout the !CompleteSearch code from our SVN, build it, build an index, run a server on that index, and ask queries to that server via HTTP. Don't be afraid, it's easy. If you have questions, send an email to Hannah Bast <bast@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>.
-Line 21:
+Line 11:
-== UTF-8 lowercase in PHP (23May07 Markus) ==

Requires extension mbstring (for functions like mb_strtolower). Following line required in php.ini
+=== 0. Get source code ===
-Line 27:
+Line 14:
-In windows:
extension=php_mbstring.dll

or in linux:
extension=php_mbstring.so
+svn checkout
http://ad-svn.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/completesearch/codebase
Username: [ask us]
Password: [ask us]
-Line 34:
+Line 20:
-(On geek, the mb_... functions were available by default, on Markus's laptop the line above had to be added.)
+=== 1.  Compile ===
-Line 36:
+Line 22:
+{{{
make all
}}}
-Line 37:
+Line 26:
-== Texts in text.php are now UTF-8 encoded (23May07 Markus) ==
+This will build three binaries:

 * buildIndex
 * buildDocsDB
 * startCompletionServer

If you call any of these binaries without parameters you will get usage
info with all the available options.

=== 2. Input (to be produced by a suitable parser) ===

Ínput 1: a file ''<base-name>.words'', with lines of the form

{{{
<word><TAB><doc id><TAB><score><TAB><position>
}}}

This file must be sorted such that ''sort -c -k1,1 -k2,2n -k4,4n'' does not complain.

Input 2: a file ''<base-name>.docs'', with lines of the form

<doc id><TAB>u:<url of document><TAB>t:<title of document><TAB>H:<raw
text of document>

This file must be sorted so that ''sort -c -k1,1n'' does not complain.

You find a very simple example under
http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~bast/topsecret/example.tgz

=== 3. Build the word index ===

{{{
buildIndex HYB <base-name>.words
}}}

This produces the (binary) index file ''<base-name>.hybrid''.
It enables fast processing of the powerful query language offered by CompleteSearch (including
full-text search, prefix search and completion, synonym search, error-tolerant search,
etc.).

''buildIndex'' also produces the file ''<base-name>.vocabulary'' that provides
the mapping from word ids to words. This is an ASCII file, you can just look at it.

Note that by default, the HYB index is built with block of fixed sizes. It is more
efficient though to pass it an explicit list of block boundaries (-B
option). TODO: say something about this here, it's actually quite easy.

=== 4. Build the doc index ===

{{{
buildDocsDB <name>.docs
}}}

This produces the (binar) file ''<base-name>.docs.DB'' which provides an efficient mapping
from doc ids to documents. This is needed if you want to show excerpts / snippets
from documents matching the query (which is almost always the case).

=== 5. Start server ===

{{{
startCompletionServer -Z <base-name>.hybrid
}}}

This starts the server. If you run it without argument, it prints usage
information and shows you the (very many) command line options. The ''-Z''
argument lets the server run in the foreground, and
output everything to the console, which is convenient for testing. The default
mode is to run as a background process and write all output to a log file.

=== 6. Queries ===

The server listens on the port you specified in step 6 (''8888'' by
default), and speaks ''HTTP''. For example:

{{{
curl "http://localhost:8888/?q=die*&h=1&c=3"
}}}

This will return the result as an XML, which should be self-explanatory.

Here is the list of parameters which you may pass along with the query
(q=...)

 * h  : number of hits
 * c  : number of completions (of last query word, if you put a * behind it)
 * f  : send hits starting from this one (default: 0)
 * en : number of excerpts per hit
 * er : size of excerpt
 * rd : how to rank the documents (0 = by score, 1 = by doc id, 2 = by word id, append a or d for ascending or descending)
 * rw : how to rank the words (0 = by score, 1 = by doc count, 2 = by occurrence count, 3 = by word id, 4 = by doc id, append a or d as above)
 * s  : how to aggregate scores (expert option, ignore for the moment)
 * format : one of xml, json, jsonp. Return result in that format.