Ferret talk - Dec 2005 - Is it possible to highlight search keywords in results?

I''m wondering if ferret has any built-in search/replace mechanism that
I might be able to use to  highlight the query data in each search
result.  The reason I think this would be a good idea is that I could
end up having to practically duplicate the ferret query parser just to
interpret the query so that I can figure out how to highlight the
keywords in the search results.  Just in case I''m not making sense,
here is an example of what I want:

query = ''contents:"testing|trucks"''
prepend = ''<strong>''
append = ''</strong>''
count = index.search_each(query) do |doc, score|
  highlighted_contents     index.highlight_for_query(doc, query, prepend,
append)
  puts highlighted_contents
end

This would make all instances of "testing" and "trucks"
appear in bold
for html formatted text.  Thoughts?

Thanks,
Carl

There is a highlighter for Lucene in the Lucene sandbox. You can have
a look at it and try porting it to Ruby if you like. If you can wait a
month or two I''ll do it myself.

http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/lucene/java/trunk/contrib/highlighter/

On 12/14/05, Carl Youngblood <carl at youngbloods.org>
wrote:
> I''m wondering if ferret has any built-in search/replace mechanism
that
> I might be able to use to  highlight the query data in each search
> result.  The reason I think this would be a good idea is that I could
> end up having to practically duplicate the ferret query parser just to
> interpret the query so that I can figure out how to highlight the
> keywords in the search results.  Just in case I''m not making
sense,
> here is an example of what I want:
>
> query = ''contents:"testing|trucks"''
> prepend = ''<strong>''
> append = ''</strong>''
> count = index.search_each(query) do |doc, score|
>   highlighted_contents >     index.highlight_for_query(doc, query,
prepend, append)
>   puts highlighted_contents
> end
>
> This would make all instances of "testing" and "trucks"
appear in bold
> for html formatted text.  Thoughts?
>
> Thanks,
> Carl
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ferret-talk mailing list
> Ferret-talk at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk
>

Sounds like a good idea.  I have bigger fish to fry right now but I
may get around to it if my search queries get hairier.  Right now a
quick and dirty solution is working okay for me.

Thanks,
Carl

On 12/13/05, David Balmain <dbalmain.ml at gmail.com>
wrote:
> There is a highlighter for Lucene in the Lucene sandbox. You can have
> a look at it and try porting it to Ruby if you like. If you can wait a
> month or two I''ll do it myself.

The Highlighter is cool, but does have some drawbacks.  First, it''s  
advantages.... you can easily get the terms for a Query and then do  
some substitutions in the original document, but Highlighter actually  
picks out the bet fragments to show.  It''s disadvantage is that it  
only highlights the terms of the query.  For example, if you search  
for "some phrase", any occurrence of the word "some" is
highlighted,
even if it is not followed by "phrase".   More visually,
here''s how
it comes out:

	http://www.lucenebook.com/search?query=%22term+positions%22

It would be sweet to have a Ruby highlighter.  I''ve done work in Java  
for a consulting client to convert a Query into a SpanQuery and have  
created a non-generalizable highlighter (does not fragment,  
currently) that highlights very precisely, so it is possible, just  
not trivial.

	Erik



On Dec 13, 2005, at 11:51 PM, David Balmain wrote:
> There is a highlighter for Lucene in the Lucene sandbox. You can have
> a look at it and try porting it to Ruby if you like. If you can wait a
> month or two I''ll do it myself.
>
> http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/lucene/java/trunk/contrib/highlighter/
>
> On 12/14/05, Carl Youngblood <carl at youngbloods.org> wrote:
>> I''m wondering if ferret has any built-in search/replace
mechanism
>> that
>> I might be able to use to  highlight the query data in each search
>> result.  The reason I think this would be a good idea is that I could
>> end up having to practically duplicate the ferret query parser  
>> just to
>> interpret the query so that I can figure out how to highlight the
>> keywords in the search results.  Just in case I''m not making
sense,
>> here is an example of what I want:
>>
>> query = ''contents:"testing|trucks"''
>> prepend = ''<strong>''
>> append = ''</strong>''
>> count = index.search_each(query) do |doc, score|
>>   highlighted_contents >>     index.highlight_for_query(doc,
query, prepend, append)
>>   puts highlighted_contents
>> end
>>
>> This would make all instances of "testing" and
"trucks" appear in
>> bold
>> for html formatted text.  Thoughts?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Carl
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ferret-talk mailing list
>> Ferret-talk at rubyforge.org
>> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ferret-talk mailing list
> Ferret-talk at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk

On 12/14/05, Erik Hatcher <erik at ehatchersolutions.com>
wrote:
> The Highlighter is cool, but does have some drawbacks.  First,
it''s
> advantages.... you can easily get the terms for a Query and then do
> some substitutions in the original document, but Highlighter actually
> picks out the bet fragments to show.  It''s disadvantage is that it
> only highlights the terms of the query.  For example, if you search
> for "some phrase", any occurrence of the word "some" is
highlighted,
> even if it is not followed by "phrase".   More visually,
here''s how
> it comes out:
>
>         http://www.lucenebook.com/search?query=%22term+positions%22
>
> It would be sweet to have a Ruby highlighter.  I''ve done work in
Java
> for a consulting client to convert a Query into a SpanQuery and have
> created a non-generalizable highlighter (does not fragment,
> currently) that highlights very precisely, so it is possible, just
> not trivial.
Not trivial. Sounds like a challenge. I like the sound of that. :P
>
>         Erik