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Build couchdb-lucene

1. Install Maven 2.
2. checkout repository
3. type 'mvn'
4. configure couchdb (see below)

Configure CouchDB

[couchdb]
os_process_timeout=60000 ; increase the timeout from 5 seconds.
[external]
fti=/usr/bin/java -jar /path/to/couchdb-lucene*-jar-with-dependencies.jar -search
[update_notification]
indexer=/usr/bin/java -jar /path/to/couchdb-lucene*-jar-with-dependencies.jar -index
[httpd_db_handlers]
_fti = {couch_httpd_external, handle_external_req, <<"fti">>}

Indexing Strategy

Document Indexing

By default all attributes are indexed. You can customize this process by adding a design document at _design/lucene. You must supply an attribute called "transform" which takes and returns a document.

{
  "transform":"function(doc) { return doc; }"
}

Example Transforms

Index Everything (supplying no _design/lucene is equivalent and faster)

function(doc) {
  return doc;
}

Index Nothing

function(doc) {
  return null;
}

Don't Index Confidential Fields

function(doc) {
  delete doc.social_security_number;
  delete doc.date_of_birth;
  return doc;
}

Search Across All Properties

function(doc) {
  function DumpObject(obj)  {
    var result = "";
    for (var property in obj) {
      var value=obj[property];
      if (typeof value == 'object') {
        result += DumpObject(value) + " "; 
      } else {
        result += value + " ";
      }
    } 
    return result;
  }
  doc.all=DumpObject(doc); 
  return doc;
}

The function is evaluated by Rhino. You may add, modify and remove any attributes. Additionally, returning null will exclude the document from indexing entirely.

Attachment Indexing

Couchdb-lucene uses Apache Tika to index attachments of the following types, assuming the correct content_type is set in couchdb;

Supported Formats

• Excel spreadsheets (application/vnd.ms-excel)
• Word documents (application/msword)
• Powerpoint presentations (application/vnd.ms-powerpoint)
• Visio (application/vnd.visio)
• Outlook (application/vnd.ms-outlook)
• XML (application/xml)
• HTML (text/html)
• Images (image/*)
• Java class files
• Java jar archives
• MP3 (audio/mp3)
• OpenDocument (application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.*)
• Plain text (text/plain)
• PDF (application/pdf)
• RTF (application/rtf)

Searching with couchdb-lucene

You can perform all types of queries using Lucene's default query syntax. The following parameters can be passed for more sophisticated searches;

All parameters except 'q' are optional.

Special Fields

Dublin Core

All Dublin Core attributes are indexed and stored if detected in the attachment. Descriptions of the fields come from the Tika javadocs.

Examples

https://localhost:5984/dbname/_fti?q=field_name:value
https://localhost:5984/dbname/_fti?q=field_name:value&sort;=other_field
https://localhost:5984/dbname/_fti?debug=true&sort;=billing_size&q;=body:document AND customer:[A TO C]

Search Results Format

Here's an example of a JSON response without sorting;

{
  "q": "+_db:enron +content:enron",
  "skip": 0,
  "limit": 2,
  "total_rows": 176852,
  "search_duration": 518,
  "fetch_duration": 4,
  "rows":   [
        {
      "_id": "hain-m-all_documents-257.",
      "score": 1.601625680923462
    },
        {
      "_id": "hain-m-notes_inbox-257.",
      "score": 1.601625680923462
    }
  ]
}

And the same with sorting;

{
  "q": "+_db:enron +content:enron",
  "skip": 0,
  "limit": 3,
  "total_rows": 176852,
  "search_duration": 660,
  "fetch_duration": 4,
  "sort_order":   [
        {
      "field": "source",
      "reverse": false,
      "type": "string"
    },
        {
      "reverse": false,
      "type": "doc"
    }
  ],
  "rows":   [
        {
      "_id": "shankman-j-inbox-105.",
      "score": 0.6131107211112976,
      "sort_order":       [
        "enron",
        6
      ]
    },
        {
      "_id": "shankman-j-inbox-8.",
      "score": 0.7492915391921997,
      "sort_order":       [
        "enron",
        7
      ]
    },
        {
      "_id": "shankman-j-inbox-30.",
      "score": 0.507369875907898,
      "sort_order":       [
        "enron",
        8
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Fetching information about the index

Calling couchdb-lucene without arguments returns a JSON object with information about the index.

https://127.0.0.1:5984/enron/_fti

returns;

{"doc_count":517350,"doc_del_count":1,"disk_size":318543045}

Working With The Source

To develop "live", type "mvn dependency:unpack-dependencies" and change the external line to something like this;

fti=/usr/bin/java -cp /path/to/couchdb-lucene/target/classes:\
/path/to/couchdb-lucene/target/dependency com.github.rnewson.couchdb.lucene.Main

You will need to restart CouchDB if you change couchdb-lucene source code but this is very fast.

Configuration

couchdb-lucene respects several system properties;

You can override these properties like this;

fti=/usr/bin/java -D couchdb.lucene.dir=/tmp \
-cp /home/rnewson/Source/couchdb-lucene/target/classes:\
/home/rnewson/Source/couchdb-lucene/target/dependency\
com.github.rnewson.couchdb.lucene.Main

Basic Authentication

If you put couchdb behind an authenticating proxy you can still configure couchdb-lucene to pull from it by specifying additional system properties. Currently only Basic authentication is supported.