Xapian discuss - Sep 2010 - Newbie question: searching certain fields only

Hallo,

I'm new to xapian and have only started checking it out, so please forgive
my silly questions.

I'm trying to get my head around the following:

Given the following fields (values with prefixes):

Name:  ....
Surname:  ....
Address: ....
...

How can I (by default) search in Name and Surname only?  ie, I want to
ignore the Address field during search, unless I explicitly search it (eg,
by using "+address:..." in my query).

I don't want to add "-address:..." to the query (even silently in
the
background) since this might inadvertently exclude desired results.

Sorry if my question is not very clear.  Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks

On 25 September 2010 13:31, goran kent <gorankent at gmail.com> wrote:
> Given the following fields (values with prefixes):
>
> Name: ?....
> Surname: ?....
> Address: ....
> ...
>
> How can I (by default) search in Name and Surname only? ?ie, I want to
> ignore the Address field during search, unless I explicitly search it (eg,
> by using "+address:..." in my query).
>
> I don't want to add "-address:..." to the query (even
silently in the
> background) since this might inadvertently exclude desired results.
Hi,

The best way is probably to add terms both with and without the field
prefix for the 'Name' and 'Surname' fields, but only with the
prefix
for the 'Address' field. You then end up with an index containing
something like the following keys:

    matt
    XNAMEmatt
    goodall
    XSURNAMEgoodall
    XADDRESS123
    XADDRESSwiggly
    XADDRESSroad

(not my real address ;-))

A search for "matt" will match any terms from the 'Name' or
'Surname'
fields. An "address:...", "name:...", etc search will match
only the
prefixed terms as before.

Hope that helps.

- Matt