Developing faceted search capabilities for hppg

[Dave Sinclair]

Hi Remdex, 

I'm looking to add faceted search capabilities to hppg and wanted to ask your opinion on the easiest/best approach to this.

An ideal solution would include facets/search filters that show how many results will be left if that filter is selected, and also the ability to prioritise different facets so they appear higher in the facet list. An example of this can be seen here: http://www.buzzillions.com/headphones-reviews

As hppg already uses sphinx I've been looking into using it for faceted search. I would prefer to use an existing library as my development time and experience is limited. There is a php port of fsphinx, a library that adds faceted search capabilities to sphinx, used to create sites such as this one: https://github.com/alexksikes/fSphinx and so far my plan is to use a similar system with hppg. 

Before proceeding with this though, if you have a moment to respond it would be really useful to hear what your strategy would be if you were to introduce faceted search to hppg. Would you do the work with sphinx or through database objects? What other considerations might be important? Of course I know you must be v busy, but even a brief answer would be really appreciated.