How do I implement Search Functionality in a website? [closed]

Answer 1

This is somewhat orthogonal to your question, but I highly recommend the idea of a RESTful search. That is, to perform a search that has never been performed, the website POSTs a query to /searches/. To re-run a search, the website GETs /searches/{some id}

There are some good documents to be found regarding this, for example here.

(That said, I like indexing where possible, though it is an optimization, and thus can be premature.)

Answer 2

If you application uses the Java EE stack and you are using Hibernate you can use the Compass Framework maintain a searchable index of your database. The Compass Framework uses Lucene under the hood.

The only catch is that you cannot replicate your search index. So you need to use a clustered database to hold the index tables or use the newer grid based index storage mechanisms that have been added to the Compass Framework 2.x.

Answer 3

If you are on Microsoft plattform you could use the Indexing service. This integrates very easliy with IIS websites.

It has all the basic features like full text search, ranking, exlcude and include certain files types and you can add your own meta information as well via meta tags in the html pages.

Do a google and you'll find tons!

Answer 4

You might want to have a look at xapian and the omega front end. It's essentially a toolkit on which you can build search functionality.

Answer 5

It depends on how comprehensive your web site is and how much you want to do yourself.

If you are running a a small website without further possibilities to add a custom search, let google do the work (maybe add a sitemap) and use the google custom search.

If you run a medium site with an sql engine use the search features of your sql engine.

If you run some heavier software stack like J2EE or .Net use Lucene, a great, powerful search engine or its .Net clone lucene.Net

If you want to abstract your search from your application and be able to query it in a language neutral way with XML/HTTP and JSON APIs, have a look at solr. Solr runs lucene in the background, but adds a nice web interface to it.

Answer 6

Use lucene,
http://lucene.apache.org/java/docs/

Apache Lucene is a high-performance, full-featured text search engine library written entirely in Java. It is a technology suitable for nearly any application that requires full-text search, especially cross-platform.

It is available in java and .net. It is also in available in php in the form of a zend framework module.

Lucene does what you wanted(indexing of the searched items), you have to keep track of a lucene index but it is much better than doing a database search in terms of performance. BTW, SO search is powered by lucene. :D