SWISH::API - Perl interface to the Swish-e C Library

    use SWISH::API;

    my $swish = SWISH::API->new( 'index.swish-e' );

    $swish->AbortLastError
        if $swish->Error;

    # A short-cut way to search

    my $results = $swish->Query( "foo OR bar" );

    # Or more typically
    my $search = $swish->New_Search_Object;

    # then in a loop
    my $results = $search->Execute( $query );

    # always check for errors (but aborting is not always necessary)

    $swish->AbortLastError
        if $swish->Error;

    # Display a list of results

    my $hits = $results->Hits;
    if ( !$hits ) {
        print "No Results\n";
        return;  /* for example *.
    }

    print "Found ", $results->Hits, " hits\n";

    # Seek to a given page - should check for errors
    $results->SeekResult( ($page-1) * $page_size );

    while ( my $result = $results->NextResult ) {
        printf("Path: %s\n  Rank: %lu\n  Size: %lu\n  Title: %s\n  Index: %s\n  Modified: %s\n  Record #: %lu\n  File   #: %lu\n\n",
            $result->Property( "swishdocpath" ),
            $result->Property( "swishrank" ),
            $result->Property( "swishdocsize" ),
            $result->Property( "swishtitle" ),
            $result->Property( "swishdbfile" ),
            $result->ResultPropertyStr( "swishlastmodified" ),
            $result->Property( "swishreccount" ),
            $result->Property( "swishfilenum" )
        );
    }

    # display properties and metanames

    for my $index_name ( $swish->IndexNames ) {
        my @metas = $swish->MetaList( $index_name );
        my @props = $swish->PropertyList( $index_name );

        for my $m ( @metas ) {
            my $name = $m->Name;
            my $id = $m->ID;
            my $type = $m->Type;
        }
        # (repeat above for @props)
    }

This module provides a Perl interface to the Swish-e search engine. This module allows embedding the swish-e search code into your application avoiding the need to fork to run the swish-e binary and to keep an index file open when running multiple queries. This results in increased search performance.

You must have installed Swish-e version 2.4 before building this module. Download from:

    http://swish-e.org

This module includes a number of classes.

Searching consists of connecting to a swish-e index (or indexes), and then running queries against the open index. Connecting to the index creates a swish object blessed into the SWISH::API class.

A SWISH::API::Search object is created from the SWISH::API object. The SWISH::API::Search object can have associated parameters (e.g. result sort order).

The SWISH::API::Search object is used to query the associated index file or files. A query on a search object returns a results object of the class SWISH::API::Results. Then individual results of the SWISH::API::Result class can be fetched by calling a method of the results object.

Finally, a result's properties can be accessed by calling methods on the result object.

To begin using Swish you must first create a Swish Handle object. This object makes the connection to one or more index files and is used to create objects used for searching the associated index files. This method returns a swish handle object blessed into the SWISH::API class. CW$index_files is a space separated list of index files to open. This always returns an object, even on errors. Caller must check for errors (see below). Returns a list of index names associated with the swish handle. These were the indexes specified as a parameter on the SWISH::API->new call. This can be used in calls below that require specifying the index file name. Returns a list of possible header names. These can be used to lookup header values. See CWSwishHeaderValue method below. A swish-e index has data associated with it stored in the index header. This method provides access to that data. Returns the header value for the header and index file specified. Most headers are a single item, but some headers (e.g. Stopwords) return a list. The list of possible header names can be obtained from the SwishHeaderNames method.

$swish->RankScheme( 0|1 );

Similar to the -R option with the swish-e command line tool. The default ranking scheme is 0. Set it to 1 to experiment with other ranking features. See the SWISH-CONFIG documentation for more on ranking schemes.

Error Handling

All errors are stored in and accessed via the SWISH::API object (the Swish Handle). That is, even an error that occurs when calling a method on a result (SWISH::API::Result) object will store the error in the parent SWISH:API object.

Check for errors after every method call. Some errors are critical errors and will require destruction of the SWISH::API object. Critical errors will typically only happen when attaching to the database and are errors such as an invalid index file name, permissions errors, or passing invalid objects to calls.

Typically, if you receive an error when attaching to an index file or files you should assume that the error is critical and let the swish object fall out of scope (and destroyed). Otherwise, if an error is detected you should check if it is a critical error. If the error is not critical you may continue using the objects that have been created (for example, an invalid meta name will generate a non-critical error, so you may continue searching using the same search object).

Error state is cleared upon a new query.

Again, all error methods need to be called on the parent swish object

$swish->Error

Returns true if an error occurred on the last operation. On errors the value returned is the internal Swish-e error number (which is less than zero).

$swish->CriticalError

Returns true if the last error was a critical error

$swish->AbortLastError

Aborts the running program and prints an error message to STDERR. Returns the string description of the current error (based on the value returned by CW$swish->Error). This is a generic error string. Returns a string with specific information about the last error, if any. For example, if a query of:

    badmeta=foo

and badmeta is an invalid metaname CW$swish->ErrorString might return Unknown metaname, but CW$swish->LastErrorMsg might return badmeta.

Generating Search and Result Objects This creates a new search object blessed into the SWISH::API::Search class. The optional CW$query parameter is a query string to store in the search object. See the section on CWSWISH::API::Search for methods available on the returned object. The advantage of this method is that a search object can be used for multiple queries:

    $search = $swish->New_Search_Objet;
    while ( $query = next_query() ) {
        $results = $search->Execute( $query );
        ...
    }

    $results = $swish->New_Search_Object->Execute( $query );

A search object holds the parameters used to generate a list of results. These methods are used to adjust these parameters and to create the list of results for the current set of search parameters. This will set (or replace) the query string associated with a search object. This method is typically not used as the query can be set when executing the actual query or when creating a search object. This method may change in the future. A structure is a bit-mapped flag used to limit search results to specific parts of an HTML document, such as the title or in H tags. The possible bits are:

    IN_FILE         = 1      This is the default
    IN_TITLE        = 2      In <title> tag
    IN_HEAD         = 4      In <head> tag
    IN_BODY         = 8      In <body>
    IN_COMMENTS     = 16     In html comments
    IN_HEADER       = 32     In <h*>
    IN_EMPHASIZED   = 64     In <em>, <b>, <strong>, <i>
    IN_META         = 128    In a meta tag (e.g. not swishdefault)

    $search->SetStructure( IN_HEAD | IN_TITLE );

    my $start = time - 48 * 60 * 60;
    $search->SetSearchLimit( 'swishlastmodified', $start, time() );

$search->ResetSearchLimit;

Clears the limit parameters for the given object. This must be called if the limit parameters need to be changed. Sets the sort order of search results. The string is a space separated list of valid document properties. Each property may contain a qualifier that sets the direction of the sort. For example, to sort the results by path name in ascending order and by rank in descending order:

    $search->SetSort( 'swishdocpath asc swishrank desc' );

The asc and desc qualifiers are optional, and if omitted ascending is assumed. Currently, errors (e.g invalid property name) are not detected on this call, but rather when executing a query. This may change in the future.

Searching generates a results object blessed into the SWISH::API::Results class. Executes a query based on the parameters in the search object. CW$query is an optional query string to use for the search ($query replaces the set query string in the search object). A typical use would be to create a search object once and then call this method for each query using the same search object changing only the passed in CW$query. The caller should check for errors after making this all.

A query creates a results object that contains information about the query (e.g. number of hits) and access to the individual results. Returns the number of results for the query. If zero and no errors were reported after calling CW$search->Execute then the query returned zero results. Returns an array of tokenized words and operators with stopwords removed. This is the array of tokens used by swish for the query. $index_name must match one of the index files specified on the creation of the swish object (via the SWISH::API->new call). The parsed words are useful for highlighting search terms in associated documents. Returns an array of stopwords removed from a query, if any, for the index specified. $index_name must match one of the index files specified on the creation of the swish object (via the SWISH::API->new call). Seeks to the position specified in the result list. Zero is the first position and CW$results->Hits-1 is the last position. Seeking past the end of results sets a non-critical error condition. Useful for seeking to a specific page of results. Fetches the next result from the list of results. Returns undef if no more results are available. CW$result is an object blessed into the SWISH::API::Result class.

The follow methods provide access to data related to an individual result. Fetches the property specified for the current result. An invalid property name will cause an exception (which can be caught by wrapping the call in an eval block). Can return undefined. Date properties are returned as a timestamp. Use something like Date::Format to format the strings (or just call scalar localtime( CW$prop ) ). Fetches and formats the property. Unlike above, invalid property names return the string (null) this will likely change to match the above (i.e. throw an exception). Undefined values are returned at the null string (""). Returns the header value specified. This is similar to CW$swish->HeaderValue(), but the index file is not specified (it is determined by the result).

Swish-e has MetaNames which allow searching by fields in the index. This method returns information about the Metanames. Pass in the name of an open index file name and returns a list of SWISH::API::MetaName objects. Three methods are currently defined on these objects:

    $meta->Name;
    $meta->ID;
    $meta->Type;

    $prop->Name;
    $prop->ID;
    $prop->Type;

Perl's garbage collection makes it easy to write code for searching with Swish-e, but care must be taken not to keep objects around too long which can use up memory. Here's an example of a potential problem. Say you have a very large number of documents indexed and you want to find the first hit for a number of popular keywords (error checking omitted in this bad example):

    sub first_hit {
      my $query = shift;
      my $handle = SWISH::API->new( 'index.swish-e');
      my $results = $handle->Query( $query );
      my $first_hit = $results->NextResult;
      return $first_hit;
    }

    my @first_hit_list;
    for ( @keywords )
        push @first_hit_list, $first_hit($_);
    }

   # print file names
   for my $result ( @first_hit_list ) {
      print $result->Property('swishdocpath'),"\n";
   }

      ...
      my $first_hit = $results->NextResult;
      return $first_hit->Property('swishdocpath');
   }

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

Bill Moseley moseley@hank.org. 2002/2003/2004

Please contact the Swish-e discussion email list for support with this module or with Swish-e. Please do not contact the developers directly.