xenial (1) search.1.gz

NAME

       search - Sphinxsearch command-line index query

SYNOPSIS

       search [OPTIONS] word1 [word2 [word3 [...]] ]

DESCRIPTION

       Sphinx is a collection of programs that aim to provide high quality fulltext search.

       search is one of the helper tools within the Sphinx package. Whereas searchd is responsible for searches
       in a server-type environment, search is aimed at testing the index from the command line, and testing the
       index quickly without building a framework to make the connection to the server and process its response.

       Note: search is not intended to be deployed as part of a client application; it is strongly recommended
       you do not write an interface to search instead of searchd, and none of the bundled client APIs support
       this method. (In any event, search will reload files each time, whereas searchd will cache them in memory
       for performance.)

       That said, many types of query that you could build in the APIs could also be made with search, however
       for very complex searches it may be easier to construct them using a small script and the corresponding
       API. Additionally, some newer features may be available in the searchd system that have not yet been
       brought into search.

       When calling search, it is not necessary to have searchd running; simply make sure that the account
       running the search program has read access to the configuration file and the index files.

       The default behaviour is to apply a search for word1 (AND word2 AND word3... as specified) to all fields
       in all indexes as given in the configuration file. If constructing the equivalent in the API, this would
       be the equivalent to passing SPH_MATCH_ALL to SetMatchMode, and specifying * as the indexes to query as
       part of Query.

OPTIONS

       There are many options available to search.

       Firstly, the general options:

       --config CONFIGFILE, -c CONFIGFILE
           Use the given file as its configuration, just as with indexer.

       --index INDEX, -i INDEX
           Limit searching to the specified index only; normally search would attempt to search all of the
           physical indexes listed in sphinx.conf, not any distributed ones.

       --stdin
           Accept the query from the standard input, rather than the command line. This can be useful for
           testing purposes whereby you could feed input via pipes and from scripts

       Options for setting matches:

       --any, -a
           Changes the matching mode to match any of the words as part of the query (word1 OR word2 OR word3).
           In the API this would be equivalent to passing SPH_MATCH_ANY to SetMatchMode.

       --phrase, -p
           Changes the matching mode to match all of the words as part of the query, and do so in the phrase
           given (not including punctuation). In the API this would be equivalent to passing SPH_MATCH_PHRASE to
           SetMatchMode.

       --boolean, -b
           Changes the matching mode to Boolean matching. Note if using Boolean syntax matching on the command
           line, you may need to escape the symbols (with a backslash) to avoid the shell/command line processor
           applying them, such as ampersands being escaped on a Unix/Linux system to avoid it forking to the
           search process, although this can be resolved by using --stdin, as below. In the API this would be
           equivalent to passing SPH_MATCH_BOOLEAN to SetMatchMode.

       --ext, -e
           Changes the matching mode to Extended matching. In the API this would be equivalent to passing
           SPH_MATCH_EXTENDED to SetMatchMode, and it should be noted that use of this mode is being discouraged
           in favour of Extended2, below.

       --ext2, -e2
           Changes the matching mode to Extended matching, version 2. In the API this would be equivalent to
           passing SPH_MATCH_EXTENDED2 to SetMatchMode, and it should be noted that use of this mode is being
           recommended in favour of Extended, due to being more efficient and providing other features.

       --filter <attr><v>, -f <attr><v>
           Filters the results such that only documents where the attribute given (attr) matches the value given
           (v). For example, --filter deleted 0 only matches documents with an attribute called 'deleted' where
           its value is 0. You can also add multiple filters on the command line, by specifying multiple
           --filter multiple times, however if you apply a second filter to an attribute it will override the
           first defined filter.

       Options for handling the results:

       --limit <count>, -l <count>
           limits the total number of matches back to the number given. If a 'group' is specified, this will be
           the number of grouped results. This defaults to 20 results if not specified (as do the APIs)

       --offset <count>, -o <count>
           offsets the result list by the number of places set by the count; this would be used for pagination
           through results, where if you have 20 results per 'page', the second page would begin at offset 20,
           the third page at offset 40, etc.

       --group <attr>, -g <attr>
           specifies that results should be grouped together based on the attribute specified. Like the GROUP BY
           clause in SQL, it will combine all results where the attribute given matches, and returns a set of
           results where each returned result is the best from each group. Unless otherwise specified, this will
           be the best match on relevance.

       --groupsort <expr>, -gs <expr>
           instructs that when results are grouped with --group, the expression given in <expr> shall determine
           the order of the groups. Note, this does not specify which is the best item within the group, only
           the order in which the groups themselves shall be returned.

       --sortby <clause>, -s <clause>
           specifies that results should be sorted in the order listed in <clause>. This allows you to specify
           the order you wish results to be presented in, ordering by different columns. For example, you could
           say --sortby "@weight DESC entrytime DESC" to sort entries first by weight (or relevance) and where
           two or more entries have the same weight, to then sort by the time with the highest time (newest)
           first. You will usually need to put the items in quotes (--sortby "@weight DESC") or use commas
           (--sortby @weight,DESC) to avoid the items being treated separately. Additionally, like the regular
           sorting modes, if --group (grouping) is being used, this will state how to establish the best match
           within each group.

       --sortexpr <expr>, -S <expr>
           specifies that the search results should be presented in an order determined by an arithmetic
           expression, stated in expr. For example: --sortexpr "@weight + ( user_karma + ln(pageviews) )*0.1"
           (again noting that this will have to be quoted to avoid the shell dealing with the asterisk).
           Extended sort mode is discussed in more detail under the SPH_SORT_EXTENDED entry under the Sorting
           modes section of the manual.

       --sort=date
           specifies that the results should be sorted by descending (i.e. most recent first) date. This
           requires that there is an attribute in the index that is set as a timestamp.

       --rsort=date
           specifies that the results should be sorted by ascending (i.e. oldest first) date. This requires that
           there is an attribute in the index that is set as a timestamp.

       --sort=ts
           specifies that the results should be sorted by timestamp in groups; it will return all of the
           documents whose timestamp is within the last hour, then sorted within that bracket for relevance.
           After, it would return the documents from the last day, sorted by relevance, then the last week and
           then the last month. It is discussed in more detail under the SPH_SORT_TIME_SEGMENTS entry under the
           Sorting modes section of the manual.

       Other options:

       --noinfo, -q
           instructs search not to look-up data in your SQL database. Specifically, for debugging with MySQL and
           search, you can provide it with a query to look up the full article based on the returned document
           ID. It is explained in more detail under the sql_query_info directive.

AUTHOR

       Andrey Aksenoff (shodan@sphinxsearch.com). This manual page is written by Alexey Vinogradov
       (klirichek@sphinxsearch.com). Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under
       the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 any later version published by the Free Software
       Foundation.

       On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in
       /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.

SEE ALSO

       indexer(1), searchd(1), indextool(1)

       Sphinx and it's programs are documented fully by the Sphinx reference manual available in
       /usr/share/doc/sphinxsearch.