> Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 14:30:07 -0400
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Custom Search
>
> On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 10:50 AM, Brian Levine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Has anyone had any luck in implementing a custom search?
> >
> > I'm interested in searching not just blog entries, but also some other
> > fields that are in my DB. I checked out the manuals and dug around in the
> > code a bit (only found search plugins for google and wiki, but those seem
> > to be something else). There doesn't seem to be any hooks in for adding my
> > own search functionality. Does this sound right?
>
> Yes, unfortunately that is correct. There is currently no search plugin
> facility
>
>
> > Since I don't want to change roller source because that would make
> > upgrades/updates a PIA, my current plan is to write a new search servlet to
> > handle what I want to do. But I still want to keep everything within the
> > roller framework (if that makes sense). So, I'm also going to extend
> > PageModel to be able to display the results in a different way -- because
> > I'm going to be displaying more than blog entries. And then right my own
> > velocity template for rendering the page. And it looks like I'll have to
> > implement my own pager since as I mentioned before I'll be returning
> > results that contain more than blog entries.
>
> Create your own page models to display your new search results sounds
> like a good idea.
>
> Question are: 1) how do you hook-in to ensure that you index the
> things you want to index and 2) how do return your search results so
> that they can be included in Roller-generated blog pages and feeds.
>
> Roller's backend is defined by a set of Java "manager" interfaces that
> create, retrieve, update and delete plain old Java objects or POJOs.
> The implementations of these interfaces are specified in Roller's
> Guice module file, which is called JPAWebloggerModule. By creating
> your own module class and plugging it in via roller-custom.properties,
> you can replace Roller's managers with your own implementations and
> even add entirely new managers.
>
> Override this property and substitute your own module, naming your
> implementations:
>
> guice.backend.module=org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.jpa.JPAWebloggerModule
>
> So, the answer to question #1 might be for you to override Roller's
> WeblogEntryManager with your own implementation, one that extends
> Roller's just to hook in your index operations every time an entry is
> saved, updated or deleted.
>
> For question #2, you might add your own new SearchManager interface
> with methods that return your new extended seach operations.
>
> Oh, and one thing to be aware of that Roller's Lucene implementation
> will not scale well, i.e. it won't work in a scenario where you have
> more than one instance of Roller running.
>
> - Dave
Dave, thanks for your response!
For question #1: After taking a look at the Guice file you mentioned, I think
I can get away with overriding IndexManagerImp (and pointing to the new
implementation in the Guice file), since I don't need to change how blog
entries are stored and indexed (I know, not very clear from my description).
Instead, I want to be able to search blog entries and I have other documents
that I want to search. So I'll probably set up a second Lucene index for these
different kinds of documents. Then I'll override the classes that are in the
org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.search.operations package (or write new
classes for the second Lucene index).
For quesiton #2: I think I'm okay here. The extra, umm, stuff that I want
people to be able to search for, shouldn't be displayed in feeds. The
documents are web pages on other, external websites (it's a niche search
engine). Is search being used in other places (besides the feeds), like where
you display blog entries by category? Or someplace else?
Scalability: Am I going to have trouble running lucene in a hosted environment
where other accounts on the same machine are running roller? Will it be slow,
or will it not work at all?
Thanks again Dave.
/Brian
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