[Xapian-discuss] Filter or MatchDecider or Other?

[Mike Boone]

I have about 35,000 documents stored in MySQL. I have a custom-made
PHP-based search tool for searching this data, and it works well, but does
not support boolean or phrase searching. I'd like to use Xapian to provide a
search with these features.

My existing search tool allows me to limit the search results based on other
parameters besides the text content. For example, each document has an
associated category, and I can limit my search to only a certain category.
Similarly, I can limit the search by a geographic region, or by a date
range.

I've built a Xapian-database of just the text content, and the simplesearch
tool seems to return relevant results as expected. What's the best way to
add the limiting to the search?

It looks like I could maybe add a term of something like
'Location:Location1' to the end of my document and then add OP_FILTER to the
query and require that piece of data. Or perhaps I could set the catgory as
a document value and then implement the MatchDecider to limit on that?

I haven't found the documentation very clear as to which way will work, or
which way is preferred/faster. Please point me in the right direction.

BTW, I'm developing this with the PHP Xapian bindings, please let me know if
a certain feature won't work under this setup.

Thanks!
Mike Boone
http://boonedocks.net/mike