Zend Framework: Zend_Search_Xapian Component Proposal

Table of Contents

1. Overview

Zend_Search_Xapian provides an interface to the Xapian search engine library. Xapian is written in C++ and is available as a PHP module, as such it provides far better performance than Zend_Search_Lucene. Xapian does come with a class library for PHP5, Zend_Search_Xapian is designed to be a ZF-friendly alternative.

2. References

• The Xapian Project
• PHP bindings for Xapian

3. Component Requirements, Constraints, and Acceptance Criteria

Most requirements take the form of "foo will do ...." or "foo will not support ...", although different words and sentence structure might be used. Adding functionality to your proposal is requirements creep (bad), unless listed below. Discuss major changes with your team first, and then open a "feature improvement" issue against this component.

• This component will replicate the functionality of the standard Xapian PHP library.
• This component will not provide a stand-aline Xapian search engine (it will require the Xapian PHP module).

4. Dependencies on Other Framework Components

• Zend_Exception

5. Theory of Operation

The functionality replicates the standard Xapian PHP library.

6. Milestones / Tasks

• Milestone 1: design notes will be published here
• Milestone 2: Working prototype checked into the incubator supporting use cases
• Milestone 3: Unit tests exist, work, and are checked into SVN.
• Milestone 4: Initial documentation exists.

7. Class Index

• Zend_Search_Xapian
• Zend_Search_Xapian_Database
• Zend_Search_Xapian_Database_Writable
• Zend_Search_Xapian_Document
• Zend_Search_Xapian_Enquire
• Zend_Search_Xapian_ESet OR Zend_Search_Xapian_ExpandedSet
• Zend_Search_Xapian_ESetIterator OR Zend_Search_Xapian_ExpandedSetIterator
• Zend_Search_Xapian_MatchDecider
• Zend_Search_Xapian_MSet OR Zend_Search_Xapian_MatchSet
• Zend_Search_Xapian_MSetIterator OR Zend_Search_Xapian_MatchSetIterator
• Zend_Search_Xapian_MultiValueSorter
• Zend_Search_Xapian_PositionIterator
• Zend_Search_Xapian_PostingIterator
• Zend_Search_Xapian_Query
• Zend_Search_Xapian_QueryParser
• Zend_Search_Xapian_RSet OR Zend_Search_Xapian_RelevanceSet
• Zend_Search_Xapian_Stem
• Zend_Search_Xapian_Stopper
• Zend_Search_Xapian_Stopper_Simple
• Zend_Search_Xapian_TermGenerator
• Zend_Search_Xapian_TermIterator
• Zend_Search_Xapian_ValueIterator
• Zend_Search_Xapian_ValueRangeProcessor
• Zend_Search_Xapian_ValueRangeProcessor_Date
• Zend_Search_Xapian_ValueRangeProcessor_Number
• Zend_Search_Xapian_ValueRangeProcessor_String
• Zend_Search_Xapian_Weight
• Zend_Search_Xapian_Weight_BM25 - not sure if this name would be ok?
• Zend_Search_Xapian_Weight_Bool OR Zend_Search_Xapian_Weight_Boolean
• Zend_Search_Xapian_Weight_Trad OR Zend_Search_Xapian_Weight_Traditional

8. Use Cases

9. Class Skeletons

At the moment all classes mimic the structure of the standard Xapian class library. Some more investigation is needed into each of the properties and methods to see what changes can be made. My suspicion is that all iterators could be implement SeekableIterator, Countable and ArrayAccess. The method names could be made friendlier also.