Supported queries

Zend_Search_Lucene and Java Lucene support a powerful query language. It allows searching for individual terms, phrases, ranges of terms; using wildcards and fuzzy search; combining queries using boolean operators; and so on.

A detailed query language description can be found in the Zend_Search_Lucene component documentation.

What follows are examples of some common query types and strategies.

Example #1 Querying for a single word

hello

Searches for the word "hello" through all document fields.

Note: Default search field
Important note! Java Lucene searches only through the "contents" field by default, but Zend_Search_Lucene searches through all fields. This behavior can be modified using the Zend_Search_Lucene::setDefaultSearchField($fieldName) method.

Example #2 Querying for multiple words

hello dolly

Searches for two words. Both words are optional; at least one of them must be present in the result.

Example #3 Requiring words in a query

+hello dolly

Searches for two words; "hello" is required, "dolly" is optional.

Example #4 Prohibiting words in queried documents

+hello -dolly

Searches for two words; "hello" is required, 'dolly' is prohibited. In other words, if the document matches "hello", but contains the word "dolly", it will not be returned in the set of matches.

Example #5 Querying for phrases

"hello dolly"

Searches for the phrase "hello dolly"; a document only matches if that exact string is present.

Example #6 Querying against specific fields

title:"The Right Way" AND text:go

Searches for the phrase "The Right Way" within the title field and the word "go" within the text field.

Example #7 Querying against specific fields as well as the entire document

title:"The Right Way" AND  go

Searches for the phrase "The Right Way" within the title field and the word "go" word appearing in any field of the document.

Example #8 Querying against specific fields as well as the entire document (alternate)

title:Do it right

Searches for the word "Do" within the title field and the words "it" and "right" words through all fields; any single one matching will result in a document match.

Example #9 Querying with the wildcard "?"

te?t

Search for words matching the pattern "te?t", where "?" is any single character.

Example #10 Querying with the wildcard "*"

test*

Search for words matching the pattern "test*", where "*" is any sequence of zero or more characters.

Example #11 Querying for an inclusive range of terms

mod_date:[20020101 TO 20030101]

Search for the range of terms (inclusive).

Example #12 Querying for an exclusive range of terms

title:{Aida to Carmen}

Search for the range of terms (exclusive).

Example #13 Fuzzy searches

roam~

Fuzzy search for the word "roam".

Example #14 Boolean searches

(framework OR library) AND php

Boolean query.

All supported queries can be constructed through Zend_Search_Lucene's query construction API. Moreover, query parsing and query constructing may be combined:

Example #15 Combining parsed and constructed queries

$userQuery = Zend_Search_Lucene_Search_QueryParser::parse($queryStr);
 
$query = new Zend_Search_Lucene_Search_Query_Boolean();
$query->addSubquery($userQuery, true  /* required */);
$query->addSubquery($constructedQuery, true  /* required */);