In the previous post we saw how to install and configure sphinx. In this post, I will write about SphinxQL and how integration sphinx with PHP.
Starting with SphinxQL
SphinxQL is the part which is liked most about sphinx. What basically sphinx has done is implemented the mysql protocol, so using mysql client we can directly connect with sphinx.
So test this out, run below
mysql -P9306 --protocol=tcp --prompt='sphinxQL> '
After you run this command you get a sphinxQL> prompt. Here you can run sql queries called SphinxQL.
Sphinx mysql server runs on port 9306.
http://sphinxsearch.com/docs/2.2.2/sphinxql-reference.html Here is a list of all queries which you can run.
A basic query would look like
SELECT full_name,brand FROM products_indexed WHERE cat_id=1 LIMIT 0,10;
Below is the output.
If you want to run a full text search, the query is
SELECT * FROM products_indexed WHERE MATCH('@full_name hello')
There are many options in the select query for which details are given here http://sphinxsearch.com/docs/2.2.2/sphinxql-select.html
Using PHP to Search Sphinx
First to install php sphinx extension run this command
sudo pear install pecl/sphinx
After doing this restart apache server using
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
check if sphinx is install or not using
php -i | grep sphinx
If sphinx doesn’t show up, you need to add the extension.so file to php configuration files.
For PHP < 5.5
echo "extension=sphinx.so" | sudo tee /etc/php5/conf.d/sphinx.ini
For PHP > 5.5
echo "extension=sphinx.so" | sudo tee /etc/php5/mods-available/sphinx.ini // Load Sphinx in Apache2 PHP: sudo ln -s /etc/php5/mods-available/sphinx.ini /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/20-sphinx.ini // Load Sphinx in php5-cli: sudo ln -s /etc/php5/mods-available/sphinx.ini /etc/php5/cli/conf.d/20-sphinx.ini
Again restart apache and check it should be installed now.
If you are getting error
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ‘/usr/lib/php5/20121212+lfs/sphinx.so’ – /usr/lib/php5/20121212+lfs/sphinx.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory in Unknown on line 0
Solution
1. sudo pear install sphinx
if above doesn’t work then download source file from here http://pecl.php.net/package/sphinx
then execute the commands below
phpize --clean phpize ./configure make make install
If during configure you get an error
configure: error: Cannot find libsphinxclient headers
ERROR: `/tmp/pear/temp/sphinx/configure –with-sphinx’ failed
then do to fix it
sudo apt-get install libsphinxclient-dev
sudo apt-get install libsphinxclient-0.0.1
Once php is installed, then see below
I used library http://foolcode.github.io/SphinxQL-Query-Builder/ to run SphinxQL with PHP.
You can also use normal mysql or mysqli libraries of php. Just execute SphinxQL just like a normal sql query in php.
Download the above package zip file and then write code as below.
Another common error during running sphinxql through php is
mysql_connect(): Server sent charset (0) unknown to the
The solution to this to complie sphinx from source, as given above. Only this time you need to change
Change line 15083 of searchd.cpp from
"\x00" // server language
to
"\x21" // server language
\x21 means utf8 and utf8_general_ci
the file searchd.cpp is located in src/ folder.
require_once (__FILE__).'/sphinx/Foolz/SphinxQL/SphinxQL.php';
require_once (__FILE__).'/sphinx/Foolz/SphinxQL/Connection.php';
use Foolz\SphinxQL\SphinxQL;
use Foolz\SphinxQL\Connection;
$connSQL = new Connection();
$connSQL->setConnectionParams('localhost', '9306');
SphinxQL::forge($connSQL);
$sqlQueryString = "SELECT WEIGHT() as w,* FROM category_data WHERE MATCH('@name Apple iPhone 5S') AND cat_id=1 LIMIT 10 OPTION ranker = sph04;";
$result = $connSQL->query($sqlQueryString) ;
echo '<pre>';
print_r($result);
This will give a desired output.
Manipulate Search Result Priority Using Weight
In many cases you want manipulate the search result order based on the your data rather than just plan simple FTS ordering.
For e.g In an ecommerce website if a user search “Apple Iphone” you would want, in the search result to first return all apple iphone mobiles, rather then apple iphone accessories. You products database would have mobiles, chargers, batteries, covers etc but you would want to give higher priority to mobiles. To do this you need to manipulate weights.
Lets assume a mysql table with columns
product_name
product_category
category_priority
for the column category priority we would give
priority = 1 for mobile,
2 for covers,
3 for chargers
you can change your sql query as
$sqlQueryString = "SELECT WEIGHT() + (100-category_priority)*10 as w,* FROM table_name WHERE MATCH('@product_name Apple iPhone 5S') order by w desc LIMIT 10 OPTION ranker = sph04;";
Now this query will ensure that mobiles have higher weight than covers etc.
Performance, Speed and Matching
In my project, i had a table with 5million records. In my experience sphinx worked very well. The indexing process would get over within 30 seconds and index around 5 million records.
Search is also very fast and accurate. Search results are returned in few milli seconds and are very accurate. Unlike MYSQL FTS, sphinx doesn’t return bogus data. It only returns search results with accurate matching or it doesn’t return any data. With mysql fts what i have seen is, it tried to return result even if there is a very inaccurate match. This is not the case with sphinx, which is a very big plus point.
Issues with Searching
Sphinx search has an issue with space matching, e.g
If you table has indexed MotoG 8GB and you are searching “Moto G”. Sphinx doesn’t retun a match.
Also if your table has indexed “Funskool Rubik Cube 3×3″ and your search “Funskool Rubiks Cube 3 x 3 – Stickerless” it doesn’t return a match.
This an issue which i faced for which i couldn’t find a solution yet.
Hope you enjoyed my blog on sphinx and found it useful.
http://excellencemagentoblog.com/sphinx-installation-configuration
http://excellencemagentoblog.com/sphinx-sphinxql-php
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