Sphinx Search

Sphinx Search library provides SphinxQL indexing and searching features.

• Introduction
• Installation
• Configuration (simple)
• Usage
  • Search
  • Indexer
• Advanced
  • Adapter Service Factory
  • Prepared statement
  • Working with types
  • SQL Objects
  • Query expression
• Testing
• Code quality

Introduction

This Library aims to provide:

• A SphinxQL query builder based upon Zend\Db\Sql
• A simple Search class
• An Indexer class to work with RT indices
• Factories for SphinxQL connection through Zend\Db\Adapter

We have also prepared a set of related useful tools. You can use them in conjuction with this library.

• ripaclub/zf2-sphinxsearch-tool

  A set of tools for SphinxSearch's config files creation and automation

• ripaclub/zf2-sphinxsearch

  A module for fast bootstrapping and integration of SphinxSearch library with Zend Framework

• ripaclub/sphinxsearch-bundle

  A bundle for fast bootstrapping and integration of SphinxSearch library with Symfony

• leodido/sphinxsearch

  SphinxSearch docker image (tags for various SphinxSearch's releases and betas)

Note

This library does not use SphinxClient PHP extension because everything available through the Sphinx API is also available via SphinxQL but not vice versa (i.e., writing to RT indicies is only available via SphinxQL).

Installation

Using composer:

Add the following to your composer.json file:

"require": {
	"ripaclub/sphinxsearch": "~0.8.0",
}

Note

Since version 0.8.1, PHP 7 and Zend Framework's components of 3.x series are fully supported.

Starting from 0.8.x series the minimum requirements are PHP >= 5.5 and Zend Framework dependencies >= 2.4.

When forced to use a PHP version less (or equal) than 5.4 and/or a Zend Framework dependencies less (or equal) then 2.3 you can use 0.7.1 version.

Configuration (simple)

In order to work with library components you need an adapter instance. You can simply obtain configured adapter by using the built-in factory like the following example:

use Zend\ServiceManager\ServiceManager;
use Zend\ServiceManager\Config;

$serviceManagerConfig = new Config([
    'factories' => [
        'SphinxSearch\Db\Adapter\Adapter' => 'SphinxSearch\Db\Adapter\AdapterServiceFactory'
    ],
    'aliases' => [
        'sphinxql' => 'SphinxSearch\Db\Adapter\Adapter'
    ]
]);
$serviceManager = new ServiceManager();
$serviceManagerConfig->configureServiceManager($serviceManager);
$serviceManager->setService('Config', [
    'sphinxql' => [
        'driver'    => 'pdo_mysql',
        'hostname'  => '127.0.0.1',
        'port'      => 9306,
        'charset'   => 'UTF8'
    ]
]);

$adapter = $serviceManager->get('sphinxql');

Note

Only two drivers are supported:

• pdo_mysql
• mysqli

For more details see the Adapter Service Factory section.

Usage

Search

Assuming $adapter has been retrivied via ServiceManager:

use SphinxSearch\Search;
use SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Predicate\Match;

$search = new Search($adapter);
$rowset = $search->search('foo', new Match('?', 'ipsum dolor'));

echo 'Founds row:' . PHP_EOL;
foreach ($rowset as $row) {
	echo $row['id'] . PHP_EOL;
}

The search() method takes as first argument the index name (or an array of indicies) and the second one accepts a where condition (same as Zend\Db\Sql\Select::where()). Furthermore search() second argument can accept a closure, which in turn, will be passed the current Select object that is being used to build the SELECT query.

The following usage is possible:

use SphinxSearch\Search;
use SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Select;
use SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Predicate\Match;

$search = new Search($adapter);
$rowset = $search->search('foo', function(Select $select) {
	$select->where(new Match('?', 'ipsum dolor'))
	       ->where(['c1 > ?' => 5])
               ->limit(1);
});

The SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Select class (like Zend\Db\Sql\Select which we extend from) supports the following methods related to SQL standard clauses:

$select->from($table)
$select->columns(array $columns)
$select->where($predicate, $combination = Predicate\PredicateSet::OP_AND)
$select->group($group)
$select->having($predicate, $combination = Predicate\PredicateSet::OP_AND)
$select->order($order)
$select->limit($limit)
$select->offset($offset)
// And also variable overloading for:
$select->where
$select->having

Thus it adds some SphinxQL specific methods:

$select->withinGroupOrder($withinGroupOrder)
$select->option(array $values, $flag = self::OPTIONS_MERGE)

Other utility methods like setSpecifications, getRawState and reset are fully supported.

Instead quantifier, join and combine are just ignored because SphinxQL syntax doesn't have them.

Indexer

Assuming $adapter has been retrivied via ServiceManager we can perform indexing of documents, provided that the indices on which we act are real time.

use SphinxSearch\Indexer;

$indexer = new Indexer($adapter);
$indexer->insert(
	'foo',
	[
		'id' => 1,
		'short' => 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet',
		'text' => 'Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit ...'
	],
	true
);

Note that third parameter of insert method is a boolean flag indicating wheter a "upsert" rather than an insert have to be done.

Furthermore, an Indexer instance allows to update and delete rows from real time indices (using the methods update and delete, respectively).

Advanced

Adapter Service Factory

This library come with two factories in bundle in order to properly configure the Zend\Db\Adapter\Adapter to work with Sphinx Search.

Use SphinxSearch\Db\Adapter\AdapterServiceFactory (see Configuration section above) for a single connection else if you need to use multiple connections use the shipped SphinxSearch\Db\Adapter\AdapterAbstractServiceFactory registering it in the ServiceManager as below:

'service_manager' => [
	'abstract_factories' => [
  		'SphinxSearch\Db\Adapter\AdapterAbstractServiceFactory'
	],
]

For the abstract factory configuration refer to Zend Db Adpater Abstract Factory documentation.

Prepared statement

SphinxQL does not support prepared statement, but PDO drivers are able to emulate prepared statement client side. To achive prepared query benefits this library fully supports this feature.

Note

The PDO driver supports prepared and non-prepared queries. The Mysqli driver does not support prepared queries.

For both SphinxSearch\Search and SphinxSearch\Indexer you can choose the working mode via setQueryMode() using one of the following flags:

const QUERY_MODE_PREPARED   = 'prepared'; // use prepared statement
const QUERY_MODE_EXECUTE    = 'execute';  // do not use prepared statement
const QUERY_MODE_AUTO       = 'auto';     // auto detect best available option (prepared mode preferred)

With the auto option the component will use the best execution mode available, prefering prepared mode if supported by the driver.

Working with types

This library aims to normalize API usage among supported drivers and modes, but due to SphinxQL limitations there are some considerations:

• NULL

  Not supported by SphinxQL. The library transparently handle it for SQL compatibility: an exception will be thrown by the driver if you try to use a value = NULL.

• boolean

  SphinxQL does not have a native boolean type but if you try to use a PHP bool the library and the driver will cast the value to 0 or 1 respectively.

• integer

  PHP native integers work properly when SphinxQL expects an uint. Note that strings containing integers do not work in filters (i.e. WHERE clause).
  WARNING: PHP integers are signed, instead SphinxQL supports only UNSIGNED integers and UNIX timestamp.

• float

  Due to SphinxQL specific issues related to float values (especially in WHERE clause), by default them are converted to a 32-bit-single-precision compatible string rappresentation which are then included into the SQL query as literals, even in the case where prepared statements are used.

  This feature works only if value is a native PHP float (anyway strings containing floats do not work within Sphinx). If it is needed, this behaviour can be globally disabled using $adapter->getPlatform()->enableFloatConversion(false).
  

  WARNING: disabling float conversion feature can produce unexpected behaviors, some notable examples:

  • Actually Sphinx SQL interpreter treats a number without decimal part as an integer. So, assumming f1 as float column, if you try WHERE f1 = 10 you will get 42000 - 1064 - index foo: unsupported filter type 'intvalues' on float column else if you try WHERE f1 = 10.0 it will work fine.
  • Due to the fact that SphinxQL does not support float quoted as strings and PDO driver has no way to bind a double (SQL float) parameter in prepared statement mode, PDO driver will just cast to string producing a locale aware conversion (same as PHP echo), so it will work only if LC_NUMERIC setting is compliant with point as separator in decimal notation (for example you can use LC_NUMERIC='C')

For those reasons we suggest to always use proper PHP native types (i.e., not use strings for numeric fields) when building queries.

Useful link: Sphinx Attributes Docs.

SQL Objects

As Zend\Db\Sql this library provides a set of SQL objects:

• SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Select explained in Search paragraph
• SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Insert
• SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Replace same as insert, but overwrites duplicate IDs
• SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Update with the ability to handle OPTION clause
• SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Delete
• SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Show

Each of them can be retrivied by SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Sql class methods:

use SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Sql;

$sql = new Sql($adapter);
$select = $sql->select();  	// @return SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Select
$insert = $sql->insert();   // @return SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Insert
$insert = $sql->replace();	// @return SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Replace
$update = $sql->update(); 	// @return SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Update
$delete = $sql->delete();  	// @return SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Delete
$show   = $sql->show(); 	// @return SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Show

Or can be instanziated directly like in the following example:

use SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Update;
use SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Predicate\Match;

$update = new Update;
$update->from('myindex')
       ->set(['bigattr' => 1000, 'fattr' => 3465.23])
       ->where(new Match('?', 'hehe'))
       ->where(['enabled' => 1])
       ->option('strict', 1);

Then you can perform your query by:

$statement = $sql->prepareStatementForSqlObject($select);
$results = $statement->execute();

Or using the Search or the Indexer components:

$resultset = $indexer->updateWith($update);

Thus, every object (that has where()) supports the Match expression, as explained in next paragrah.

Query expression

The SphinxSearch\Query\QueryExpression class provides a placeholder expression way and a string excape mechanism in order to use safely the Sphinx query syntax. Also, the component design permits to use it standalone, since it has no dependencies on other library's components.

Some examples:

use SphinxSearch\Query\QueryExpression;

$query = new QueryExpression('@title ? @body ?', ['hello', 'world']);
echo $query->toString(); //outputs: @title hello @body world


echo $query->setExpression('"?"/3')
           ->setParameters(['the world is a wonderful place, but sometimes people uses spe(ia| ch@rs'])
           ->toString(); //outputs: "the world is a wonderful place, but sometimes people uses spe\(ia\| ch\@rs"/3

echo $query->setExpression('? NEAR/? ? NEAR/? "?"')
           ->setParameters(['hello', 3, 'world', 4, '"my test"'])
           ->toString(); //outputs: hello NEAR/3 world NEAR/4 "my test"

The SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Predicate\Match class uses internally the QueryExpression, so you can use it in your SQL queries directly:

use SphinxSearch\Adapter\Platform\SphinxQL;
use SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Select;
use SphinxSearch\Db\Sql\Predicate\Match;

$select = new Select;
$select->from('myindex')
       ->where(new Match('? NEAR/? ? NEAR/? "?"', ['hello', 3, 'world', 4, '"my test"']))
       ->where(['enabled' => 1]);

//outputs: SELECT * from `foo` WHERE MATCH('hello NEAR/3 world NEAR/4 "my test"') AND `enabled` = 1
echo $select->getSqlString(new SphinxQL());

Testing

The library source code (on master) is 100% covered by unit tests.

Once installed development dependencies through composer you can run phpunit.

./vendor/bin/phpunit --exclude-group=integration

To run also our integration tests execute:

./vendor/bin/phpunit

Note

To execute integration tests you need a running instance of SphinxSearch (e.g., using a correctly configured docker image).