SearchFilter Class

File

File: SearchFilter.java

Syntax

Java

public class SearchFilter;

Methods

Method	Description
addIndex	Add an index to the filter, returning an integer that can be used to identify the index in the selection functions.
and	Combine this filter with another filter in a logical "AND" operation. Only documents included in both filters will be included in this filter following an AND.
andNot	Combine this filter with another filter in a logical "AND NOT" operation. Only documents NOT included in the other filter will be included in this filter following an AND.
clear	Free memory allocated for the filter
equals	Compare two filters for equality
getIndexCount	Get number of indexes in this filter
getIndexPath	Get the path for an index in this filter
getItems	Get doc ids of documents in this filter
or	Combine this filter with another filter in a logical "OR" operation. All documents included in either filter will be included in this filter following an OR.
read	Read the search filter from a disk file.
readMultiple	Read a series of search filters from disk files.
selectAll	Select all of the documents in the index.
selectItems(int, int[], boolean)	Set the selection state of an array of document ids to the selection state indicated by fSelected.
selectItems(int, long, long, boolean)	Set the selection state of a range of document ids, from firstId to lastId, to the selection state indicated by fSelected.
selectItemsBySearch	Set the selection state of all documents in an index that match search request.
selectNone	Select no documents in the index.
write	Save the search filter to a disk file.

Description

The SearchFilter object provides a way to designate which documents can be returned by a search. It is useful in situations where a text search using must be combined with a search of a database. The database search is done first, and then the results of the database search are used to limit the dtSearch search.

Document Ids

Search filters do not use names to identify documents because a filter may specify thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of documents, and a table of filenames would take too much memory and would take too long to check. Instead, each document is identified by (a) the index it belongs to, and (b) the document's DocId, a unique integer that is assigned to each document in an index. The docId for a document can be obtained by searching for the document by name, and then examining the document's properties in search results. It can also be obtained during indexing by using the DataSource2 abstract class as the base for your data source implementation.

A docId that is selected may be returned in search results. A document that is not selected will not be returned in search results, even if it otherwise satisfies the search request.

If the criteria for the SearchFilter can be expressed as one or more search requests, you can use SelectItemsBySearch to select documents in the SearchFilter.

Indexes and Index identifiers

A search filter can cover any number of indexes. To add an index to a search filter, call addIndex() with the full path to the index. The path must be expressed exactly as it will be expressed in the search job. The AddIndex() method returns an integer that is used to identify that index when selecting and de-selecting documents for the filter. (This makes the selection and de-selection functions, which may be called thousands of times, more efficient.)

Implementation

A search filter is implemented in the dtSearch Engine using a table of bit vectors, one for each index in the filter. Each bit vector has one bit for each document in its index. A search filter for a single index with 1,000,000 documents would have 1,000,000 bits, or 125 kilobytes of data.

Class Hierarchy

com.dtsearch.engine.SearchFilter