Hi, So I'm building an input field in my app that will give suggestions as a user types with things the user has previously entered. The strings will be relatively short (<25 characters probably), and I'd like to match any substring, e.g. typing "sa" might bring up "John Sanderson" as well as "Sam Smith."
I've implemented it a certain way, and I'm looking for thoughts/ suggestions/potential failings of the implementation if you have some time to take a look. Right now, I have two db.Models: class NameIndex(db.Model): index = db.StringProperty() names = db.StringListProperty() class Name(db.Model): name = db.StringProperty() last_used_at = db.DateTimeProperty(auto_now_add=True) When a name is entered, I check to see if an existing Name entity exists and simply update the last_used_at field if so. If not, I add the Name and also add NameIndex entries, one entry for the substring starting at every character position in the string to the end of the string: "John Smith" becomes: johnsmith ohnsmith hnsmith nsmith ... etc., each with a property pointing back to "John Smith" (and other matching entries if two full names have the same indexed substring). Then, as a user types, I take the substring and look for NameIndex entries where index >= :substring and index < :substring + 'zzzz ...', which accurately returns the entries with a matching substring. I have a couple of questions about this approach: - Will this create too many entities? Is this something to worry about? - Is writing len(str) entries to the datastore with every new name going to be a problem? - Is there a better way? Thanks for reading, Taylor Hughes --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To post to this group, send email to google-appengine@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
