Re: search functionality for whole website

[Felix Geisendörfer]

Hi spark, unfortunately the code I've written was for searching local files and doesn't make usage of several advantages you've got when working with databases, so it would not be worth for you trying to apply it to your own solution. Other then that I've written some regex that will parse the queries, so "connected keywords" will be recognized and stupid user mistakes like doubling keywords will be ignored. But if you are good with regex yourself that shouldn't take you that long. Regarding ranking, there is almost no limit on the complexity of the algorithm you may use to determine one items popularity. I think user feedback should be weighted pretty high, but only if the input can be trusted. And to determine trusted feedback from spam & manipulation can be pretty tricky. So this isn't something I would completely rely on, when implementing search in a site where advantages can be taken from having certain items high up in the serps (search result pages). A better solution is to put efforts into understanding the relationships of the items you are trying to compare. Now, when searching your own database, you are in the lucky situation that you can track things like item popularity, creation / updated time stamps and tons of other useful information, just like Amazon does with "Other people who liked this product also bought ..." that you wouldn't be able to track, when searching through foreign databases (or web sites). Of course, this is sort of suffering from similar problems like the idea of taking user feedback. So again, I think it would be really nice to have a generic search solution for cakephp that's based on a central Search Model that get's it's informations from special Crawler (Components?) written by the community. This would be quite challenging, but as a result, we could have a common data interface for the applications we write with, that we could make available as a web service. I'm sure there are tons of sweet things we could do with that. Alright, but before I start to sound like an employee of this big company that tries to index the entire world, I'll stop here and leave it to you to figure out what will be the best solution for the site you are creating ; ). Best Regards, Felix Geisendörfer -------------------------- http://www.thinkingphp.org http://www.fg-webdesign.de DJ Spark schrieb: quite elegant solution, gwoo ! thanx! i'm also working on a tiny search for a project in cakephp, Felix. Anyone have some references on search enhancements? ( like that in youtube, for example, where a string is sent and it says it comes from a search result, a ranks it better on the next search for the same term). Any article related would be a good reading for me at this point ;) spark On 7/19/06, Felix Geisendörfer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Well you could refactor the Search functionality into an own model, which would make sense to me. But you don't necessarily have to do that. You can put this in any controller to say that no Model is being used: var $uses = array(); But really, if you plan to implement a quality search into a high usage web site, you should seriously consider maintaining an own search index as well as to do some regex on the queries (so users can use "two words" and such). Once you get into this topic you'll find out, that doing a good job on search (even for your own db), is not all that easy. I mean you can literally spend 50 hours (and more ...) to write the code required for an intelligent search tool. I've worked on a file search tool for my personal use in CakePHP, and I was really surprised about the complexity that comes with it. If I find some time this sommer I might try to create a Generic Search Model for CakePHP, that will work together with different types of crawlers you can create by yourself (DB Tables, RSS feeds, Html, XML, Image Meta data, ...). I think it's quite an interesting topic and if anybody else would be interested in it it might well be worth a little CakeForge project. Best Regards, Felix Geisendörfer -------------------------- http://www.thinkingphp.org http://www.fg-webdesign.de carlosrg schrieb: But, we need a model for this Controller, it's ok? What should be the model? > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Cake PHP" group. To post to this group, send email to cake-php@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cake-php -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---