New search engine is in place

[Dan]

So a couple of people have mentioned to me before now that the standard MySQL search system we have on the forum isn't up to much.

It's partly due to the size of the content it's searching, and partly just due to it being a basic search system.

Now we are running Elasticsearch which is the type of search system you see used on the like of eBay and Amazon where you can use queries to search for AND / OR and whatnot.

Some info here: Simple Query String Query | Elasticsearch Reference [5.4] | Elastic - https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/5.4/query-dsl-simple-query-string-query.html

Some queries:-

• + signifies AND operation
• | signifies OR operation
• - negates a single token
• " wraps a number of tokens to signify a phrase for searching
• * at the end of a term signifies a prefix query
• ( and ) signify precedence
• ~N after a word signifies edit distance (fuzziness)
• ~N after a phrase signifies slop amount

I'll adjust the settings as we use it and I get some records of what's being searched for and how it's being searched.

But you should be good to go now @static zap

 

[static zap]

Many thanks - With great power comes responsibility.

 

[Dan]

I've just tweaked this a bit. You should find it is getting better results now. Still can keep tweaking it all day long but it needs using between really to see how long people stay on a thread once they've found it via the search system.

I'll do it again in another few weeks.

Anybody using the extra features of the search? To do some clever searching?