Looking for advice on tags handling

[Thibaut Barrère]

Hello,

just thinking out loud, I'd appreciate some feedback from more experienced users.

Is there some thinking-sphinx way to filter output on tags that would be kept inside one column as a string (like "tag,tag1,tag2") instead of having it stored inside a separate table like with more classing tagging systems ?

Or should I use some formatting like "[tag1][tag2][tag3]" then a full text search on the corresponding index ?

thanks,

Thibaut Barrère

--
[blog] http://evolvingworker.com - tools for a better day
[blog] http://blog.logeek.fr - about writing software

[Christian Rishøj]

Hi Thibaut

The "clean" way to support tags would probably rely on multi-valued attributes [1]. 

Ignoring this, and assuming your current data model, you should note that Sphinx is a fulltext search engine. If your tags do not contain spaces themselves, spaces would be a good separator. I think a format such as "tag_1 tag_2 ... tag_N" would meet your needs.

Christian

[1] http://www.sphinxsearch.com/docs/current.html#mva

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[Thibaut Barrère]

Hi Christian,

thanks for your reply.

> The "clean" way to support tags would probably rely on multi-valued   attributes [1].

Is it something that is supported by TS itself ? (I presume yes after
reading the front page, but can't find more examples - are there
examples somewhere ? (I found something more or less related here:
http://groups.google.com/group/thinking-sphinx/browse_thread/thread/921b4ca4e27feb4c/46d2ce49a262ae06)

> Ignoring this, and assuming your current data model, you should note  
> that Sphinx is a fulltext search engine. If your tags do not contain  
> spaces themselves, spaces would be a good separator. I think a format  
> such as "tag_1 tag_2 ... tag_N" would meet your needs.

that could do the trick too, yes. Thanks for the hint!

-- Thibaut

[John Bresnik]

Make sure you set your match mode to 'any' - believe the default is to 'all'

User.search 'joe', :match_mode => :any

brez

[Pat Allan]

Hi Thibaut

MVA's are only for integers - so that'd only work if your tags are
separate models, and you have an attribute for the foreign key.
Otherwise, the space-separated tags is the best and simplest approach,
I think.

Cheers

--
Pat

[Thibaut Barrère]

Thanks guys for the feedback.

I guess I'll stick with html-encoded attributes (so I can tag "Best
Stuff" using "Best%20Stuff" and use the space-separated tags trick).

thanks!

-- Thibaut