ISearchFilter Interface

Provides a way to designate which documents can be returned by a search.

File

File: dten600.idl

Module: COM Interface

Syntax

IDL

interface ISearchFilter : IDispatch;

Group

Interfaces

Members

Properties

Property	Description
IndexCount	Number of indexes in the filter

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.
GetItemArray	GetItemArray returns an array of 32-bit integers containing all of the document ids selected in a search filter.
GetItemArrayVBS	GetItemArrayVBS is identical to GetItemArray, except that it returns the document ids in an array of Variants, so the array can be used in VBScript.
IndexPath	Returns the path of one of the indexes in the 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 filter from a file
ReadMultiple	Read a series of search filters from disk files. The filenames list is a space-delimited list of filenames. Filenames containing spaces should be quoted in the string. Returns the number of search filters read successfully. All of the search filters are logically combined with an "OR" operation.
SelectAll	Select all of the documents in the index
SelectItems	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. By default, no documents are selected when a search filter is created, so there is no need to call selectNone to initialize the filter.
Write	Save the filter to a file

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.
GetItemArray	GetItemArray returns an array of 32-bit integers containing all of the document ids selected in a search filter.
GetItemArrayVBS	GetItemArrayVBS is identical to GetItemArray, except that it returns the document ids in an array of Variants, so the array can be used in VBScript.
IndexPath	Returns the path of one of the indexes in the 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 filter from a file
ReadMultiple	Read a series of search filters from disk files. The filenames list is a space-delimited list of filenames. Filenames containing spaces should be quoted in the string. Returns the number of search filters read successfully. All of the search filters are logically combined with an "OR" operation.
SelectAll	Select all of the documents in the index
SelectItems	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. By default, no documents are selected when a search filter is created, so there is no need to call selectNone to initialize the filter.
Write	Save the filter to a file

Properties

Property	Description
IndexCount	Number of indexes in the filter

Remarks

SearchFilter 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. See: Document Ids

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 effiicent.)

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. For example, a search filter for a single index with 1,000,000 documents would have 1,000,000 bits, or 125 kilobytes of data.

Example

// Set up a filter that will only allow documents 1 through 10 in the index // to be returned. dim filter as dtengine.SearchFilter set filter = theEngine.NewSearchFilter dim iIndex as integer iIndex = filter.AddIndex("c:dataindex") ' Select documents with ids from 1 to 10 filter.SelectItems(iIndex, 1, 10, true); ' Select documents containing "apple" filter.SelectItemsBySearch(iIndex, "apple", true); ... set up search job ... searchJob.SetFilter(filter) // Execute the search searchJob.Execute()

See Filter.vbs for more sample code using SearchFilter.

Class Hierarchy

ISearchFilter