Indexing your Models
- Basic Indexing
- Fields
- Attributes
- Conditions and Groupings
- Sanitizing SQL
- Multiple Indices
- Processing your Index
Basic Indexing
Everything to set up the indexes for your models goes in the define_index method, within your model. Don’t forget to place this block below your associations and any accepts_nested_attributes_for
calls, otherwise any references to them for fields and attributes will not work.
class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
# ...
define_index do
indexes subject, :sortable => true
indexes content
indexes author(:name), :as => :author, :sortable => true
has author_id, created_at, updated_at
end
# ...
end
Fields
The indexes
method adds one (or many) fields, by referencing the model’s column names. You cannot reference model methods – Sphinx talks directly to your database, and Ruby doesn’t get loaded at this point.
indexes content
Keep in mind that if you’re referencing a column that shares its name with a core Ruby method (such as id, name or type), then you’ll need to specify it using a symbol.
indexes :name
You don’t need to keep the same names as the database, though. Use the :as
option to signify an alias.
indexes content, :as => :post
You can also flag fields as being sortable.
indexes subject, :sortable => true
Use the :facet option to signify a facet.
indexes authors.name, :as => :author, :facet => true
If there are associations in your model, you can drill down through them to access other columns. Explicit aliases are required when doing this.
indexes author(:name), :as => :author
indexes author.location, :as => :author_location
There may be times when a normal column value isn’t exactly what you’re after, so you can also define your indexes as raw SQL:
indexes "LOWER(first_name)", :as => :first_name, :sortable => true
Again, in this situation, an explicit alias is required.
Attributes
The has method adds one (or many) attributes, and just like the indexes method, it requires references to the model’s column names.
has author_id
The syntax is very similar to setting up fields. You can set aliases, and drill down into associations. You don’t ever need to label an attribute as :sortable though – in Sphinx, all attributes can be used for sorting.
Also, just like fields, if you’re referring to a reserved method of Ruby (such as id, name or type), you need to use a symbol (which, when dealing with associations, is within a method call).
has :id, :as => :article_id
has tags(:id), :as => :tag_ids
Conditions and Groupings
Because the index is translated to SQL, you may want to add some custom conditions or groupings manually – and for that, you’ll want the where
and group_by
methods:
define_index do
# ...
where "status = 'active'"
group_by "user_id"
end
Sanitizing SQL
As previously mentioned, your index definition results in SQL from the indexes, the attributes, conditions and groupings, etc. With this in mind, it may be useful to simplify your index.
One way would be to use something like ActiveRecord::Base.sanitize_sql
to generate the required SQL for you. For example:
define_index do
# ...
where sanitize_sql(["published", true])
end
This will produce the expected WHERE published = 1
for MySQL.
Multiple Indices
If you want more than one index defined for a given model, just insert more define_index
calls – but make sure you give every index a name, and have the same attributes defined in all indices.
define_index 'article_foo' do
# index definition
end
define_index 'article_bar' do
# index definition
end
Processing your Index
Once you’ve got your index set up just how you like it, you can run the rake task to get Sphinx to process the data.
rake thinking_sphinx:index
As each model is processed, you will see a message much like the one below. It is just a warning, not an error. Everything will work fine.
distributed index 'article' can not be directly indexed; skipping.
However, if you have made structural changes to your index (which is anything except adding new data into the database tables), you’ll need to stop Sphinx, re-index, and then re-start Sphinx – which can be done through a single rake call.
rake thinking_sphinx:rebuild