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Posted to java-user@lucene.apache.org by Morris Mizrahi <mm...@zonelabs.com> on 2004/03/13 08:06:44 UTC

Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Hey everyone.

 

My document object for my lucene index has a "url" field.

I have created "url" as a Text field.  

The problem I am having is that searches with a "url" that end with a
number, e.g. "e:\k2_beta1", don't return any hits even though there is
data that should match this search criteria. If you have a "url" that
ends with a letter, e.g. "e:\k2_alpha", the search works fine and
returns the correct hits.

 

Here are some code snippets of my work:

IndexCreation:

writer = new IndexWriter("index", new StandardAnalyzer(), true);

  

create the "url" as a Text field:

            doc.add(Field.Text("url", url));

 

search code:

        Analyzer analyzer = new StandardAnalyzer();

        DateFilter filter = ((SearchForm) form).getDateFilter();

        Searcher searcher = new
IndexSearcher(IndexReader.open(indexPath));

        Query query = QueryParser.parse(terms, "contents", analyzer);

        Hits hits = searcher.search(query, filter);

 

I have tried changing the "url" field from Text to Keyword. 

This didn't work and also caused my searches for any "url" to fail. 

I am using lucene 1.2

 

I know I need the proper combinations of Analyzer and Field type. 

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Thanks.

 

        Morris

 


Re: Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Posted by Erik Hatcher <er...@ehatchersolutions.com>.
On Mar 13, 2004, at 6:02 AM, Morus Walter wrote:
> Otis Gospodnetic writes:
>> Field.Keyword is suitable for storing data like Url.  Give that a try.
>>
> Hmm. I don't think keyword fields can be used with query parser,
> which is probably one of the problems here.
> He did try keyword fields.

Look in the archives for KeywordAnalyzer (custom).... and 
PerFieldAnalyzerWrapper (built-in).... using a combination of these you 
can use keyword fields.  Or, first try just using WhitespaceAnalyzer.

It is almost always the analyzer that is the cause of confusion - folks 
just get lulled into forgetting about its role because Lucene is so 
easy to use... until this type of issue bites you.

It is a wacky combination though - and notorious for causing confusion.

Perhaps someone could create a wiki page for this scenario where we can 
flesh out examples/solutions?

	Erik


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Re: Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Posted by Morus Walter <mo...@gmx.de>.
Otis Gospodnetic writes:
> Field.Keyword is suitable for storing data like Url.  Give that a try.
> 
Hmm. I don't think keyword fields can be used with query parser,
which is probably one of the problems here.
He did try keyword fields.

IMO it should work with a text field and the same analyzer for indexing
and query parser though it might return additional hits. The latter issue
is why it's usually a bad idea not to use keyword for url values, I agree 
with that.
It should be possible to see what's going wrong from looking at 
a) the tokens generated by the analyzer and
b) the parsed query (using the to_string method).
But I'm just curious to understand why it's not working.

At the end, I'd also suggest a keyword field and not using query parser
for this field. Creating queries without query parser isn't hard.

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Re: Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Posted by Erik Hatcher <er...@ehatchersolutions.com>.
Extremely well said, Tatu!



On Apr 3, 2004, at 11:24 AM, Tatu Saloranta wrote:
> On Saturday 03 April 2004 08:34, lucene@nitwit.de wrote:
>> On Saturday 03 April 2004 17:11, Erik Hatcher wrote:
>>> No objections that error messages and such could be made clearer.
>>> Patches welcome!  Care to submit better error message handling in 
>>> this
>>> case?  Or perhaps allow lower-case "to"?
>>
>> I think the best would be if Lucene would simply have a
>> setCaseSensitive(boolean).
>>
>> IMHO it's in any case a bad idea to make searches case-sensitive (per
>> default).
>
> I'd have to disagree. I think that  search engine core should not have 
> to
> bother with details of character sets, such as lower-casing. Rules for
> lower/upper/initial/mixed case for all Unicode-languages are rather
> involved... and if you tried to do that, next thing would be whether
> accentuation and umlaut marks should matter or not (which is language
> dependant). That's why to me the natural way to go is to do direct
> comparison, ignoring case when executing queries. This does not prevent
> anyone from implementing such functionality (see below).
>
> I think architecture and design of Lucene core is delightfully simple. 
> One can
> easily create case-independent functionality by using proper 
> analyzers, and
> (for the most part), configuring QueryParser. I would agree, however, 
> that
> QueryParser is "victim of its success"; it's too often used in 
> situations
> where one really should create proper GUI that builds the query. 
> Backend code
> can then mangle input as it sees fit, and build query objects.
> QueryParser is more natural for quick-n-dirty scenarios, where one 
> just has to
> slap something together quickly, or if one only has textual interface 
> to deal
> with. It's nice thing to have, but it has its limitations; there's no 
> way to
> create one parser that's perfect for every use(r).
>
> What could be done would be to make sure all examples / demo web apps 
> would
> implement case-insensitive indexing and searching, since that is often 
> what
> is needed?
>
> -+ Tatu +-
>
>>
>>> But, also, folks need to really step back and practice basic
>>> troubleshooting skills.  I asked you if that string was what you 
>>> passed
>>> to the QueryParser and you said yes, when in fact it was not.  And 
>>> you
>>
>> I forgot that I did lower-case it. I fact I even output it in it's 
>> original
>> state but lower-case it just before I pass it to lucene. That 
>> lower-casing
>> is what I would call a hack and hence it's no surprise that I forgot 
>> it :-)
>>
>> Timo
>>
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>
>
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Re: Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Posted by Tatu Saloranta <ta...@hypermall.net>.
On Saturday 03 April 2004 08:34, lucene@nitwit.de wrote:
> On Saturday 03 April 2004 17:11, Erik Hatcher wrote:
> > No objections that error messages and such could be made clearer.
> > Patches welcome!  Care to submit better error message handling in this
> > case?  Or perhaps allow lower-case "to"?
>
> I think the best would be if Lucene would simply have a
> setCaseSensitive(boolean).
>
> IMHO it's in any case a bad idea to make searches case-sensitive (per
> default).

I'd have to disagree. I think that  search engine core should not have to 
bother with details of character sets, such as lower-casing. Rules for 
lower/upper/initial/mixed case for all Unicode-languages are rather 
involved... and if you tried to do that, next thing would be whether 
accentuation and umlaut marks should matter or not (which is language 
dependant). That's why to me the natural way to go is to do direct 
comparison, ignoring case when executing queries. This does not prevent 
anyone from implementing such functionality (see below).

I think architecture and design of Lucene core is delightfully simple. One can 
easily create case-independent functionality by using proper analyzers, and 
(for the most part), configuring QueryParser. I would agree, however, that 
QueryParser is "victim of its success"; it's too often used in situations 
where one really should create proper GUI that builds the query. Backend code 
can then mangle input as it sees fit, and build query objects.
QueryParser is more natural for quick-n-dirty scenarios, where one just has to 
slap something together quickly, or if one only has textual interface to deal 
with. It's nice thing to have, but it has its limitations; there's no way to 
create one parser that's perfect for every use(r).

What could be done would be to make sure all examples / demo web apps would 
implement case-insensitive indexing and searching, since that is often what 
is needed?

-+ Tatu +-

>
> > But, also, folks need to really step back and practice basic
> > troubleshooting skills.  I asked you if that string was what you passed
> > to the QueryParser and you said yes, when in fact it was not.  And you
>
> I forgot that I did lower-case it. I fact I even output it in it's original
> state but lower-case it just before I pass it to lucene. That lower-casing
> is what I would call a hack and hence it's no surprise that I forgot it :-)
>
> Timo
>
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Re: Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Posted by Erik Hatcher <er...@ehatchersolutions.com>.
On Apr 3, 2004, at 10:34 AM, lucene@nitwit.de wrote:
> I forgot that I did lower-case it. I fact I even output it in it's 
> original
> state but lower-case it just before I pass it to lucene. That 
> lower-casing is
> what I would call a hack and hence it's no surprise that I forgot it 
> :-)

But why even lowercase?  That is what an analyzer typically does anyway 
(look at the output from AnalysisDemo to see).

Note that there are switches on QueryParser (and MultiFieldQueryParser 
is lacking in this respect, another reason not to use it) that does 
lowercase wildcard terms automatically: 
setLowercaseWildcardTerms(true).  Wildcard terms are not analyzed by 
QueryParser, so this was added to account for it.

	Erik


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Re: Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Posted by lu...@nitwit.de.
On Saturday 03 April 2004 17:11, Erik Hatcher wrote:
> No objections that error messages and such could be made clearer.
> Patches welcome!  Care to submit better error message handling in this
> case?  Or perhaps allow lower-case "to"?

I think the best would be if Lucene would simply have a 
setCaseSensitive(boolean).

IMHO it's in any case a bad idea to make searches case-sensitive (per 
default).

> But, also, folks need to really step back and practice basic
> troubleshooting skills.  I asked you if that string was what you passed
> to the QueryParser and you said yes, when in fact it was not.  And you

I forgot that I did lower-case it. I fact I even output it in it's original 
state but lower-case it just before I pass it to lucene. That lower-casing is 
what I would call a hack and hence it's no surprise that I forgot it :-)

Timo

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Re: Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Posted by Erik Hatcher <er...@ehatchersolutions.com>.
On Apr 3, 2004, at 9:59 AM, lucene@nitwit.de wrote:
> On Saturday 03 April 2004 15:19, Erik Hatcher wrote:
>> date:[20030101 TO 20030202]
>
> I found the/my bug.
>
> Since Lucene is case-sensitive, I do lower-case all queries for user's
> convenience. The ParseException is thrown because the "TO" becomes 
> "to".
>
> Well, I really think Lucene needs to daff such stumbling blocks 
> aside...

No objections that error messages and such could be made clearer.  
Patches welcome!  Care to submit better error message handling in this 
case?  Or perhaps allow lower-case "to"?

But, also, folks need to really step back and practice basic 
troubleshooting skills.  I asked you if that string was what you passed 
to the QueryParser and you said yes, when in fact it was not.  And you 
slowly fed more details of your scenario (MFQP, some German 
SnowballAnalyzer variant).  Reduce the variables in the equation and 
narrow things down until it works and then incrementally add 
complexity.  I cannot encourage folks enough to try some JUnit 
test-driven *learning* by exploring various scenarios.

	Erik


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Re: Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Posted by lu...@nitwit.de.
On Saturday 03 April 2004 15:19, Erik Hatcher wrote:
> date:[20030101 TO 20030202]

I found the/my bug. 

Since Lucene is case-sensitive, I do lower-case all queries for user's 
convenience. The ParseException is thrown because the "TO" becomes "to".

Well, I really think Lucene needs to daff such stumbling blocks aside...

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Re: Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Posted by Erik Hatcher <er...@ehatchersolutions.com>.
Ok, we're getting somewhere now.

So, where is the exception you encountered when using this utility 
code?!  (i.e. it didn't thrown an exception, so something is different 
in your usage in your code).

I tried this:

     Query query = MultiFieldQueryParser.parse("date:[20030101 TO 
20030202]", new String[] { "id", "title", "summary", "contents", "date" 
}, new GermanAnalyzer());

     System.out.println("query = " + query.toString());


And it worked fine (only duplicated the query for each field).  No 
exception at all.  Of course I'm guessing on your analyzer since you 
didn't provide that detail (although it shouldn't matter in the 
exception you experienced).

On Apr 3, 2004, at 6:06 AM, lucene@nitwit.de wrote:
> SnowballAnalyzer("German2"):
>
> Analzying "http://www.yahoo.com/foo/bar.html"
> 	org.apache.lucene.analysis.snowball.SnowballAnalyzer:
> 		[http] [www.yahoo.com] [foo] [bar.html]

So this is the analyzer you want to use, right?

Wildcards should work on "www.yahoo.*"

What is the "German2" stemmer for Snowball?

You've introduced a lot of variables to your equation here.... 
MultiFieldQueryParser and a non-standard Snowball stemmer.  All of 
which I had to pull out of you for details, each of which is critical 
to understanding the problem.

>> analyzer you are using, and also do the same on .toString of the query
>> you parsed.  Those two pieces of info will tell all.
>
> "url:www.yahoo* url:www.yahoo* url:www.yahoo* url:www.yahoo* 
> url:www.yahoo*
> url:www.yahoo*"
>
> Well, I actually use a MultiFieldQueryParser, that's probably why the 
> term
> does appear so often. Strange parser, it should be clear that am 
> explicit
> "url:xyz" should only look in the url field, shouldn't it?

Do you really need to query on multiple fields?  Why not just use the 
plain QueryParser?  If you need an aggregate field, create one at index 
time.  QueryParsing is problematic enough, but adding in MFQP makes it 
even more complicated.

Which Analyzer are you using for indexing?  This same SnowballAnalyzer 
with "German2" stemmer?

	Erik


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Re: Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Posted by lu...@nitwit.de.
On Saturday 03 April 2004 11:48, Erik Hatcher wrote:
> Provide us the results of running your url through that, using the same

SnowballAnalyzer("German2"):

Analzying "http://www.yahoo.com/foo/bar.html"
	org.apache.lucene.analysis.WhitespaceAnalyzer:
		[http://www.yahoo.com/foo/bar.html] 

	org.apache.lucene.analysis.SimpleAnalyzer:
		[http] [www] [yahoo] [com] [foo] [bar] [html] 

	org.apache.lucene.analysis.StopAnalyzer:
		[http] [www] [yahoo] [com] [foo] [bar] [html] 

	org.apache.lucene.analysis.standard.StandardAnalyzer:
		[http] [www.yahoo.com] [foo] [bar.html] 

	org.apache.lucene.analysis.snowball.SnowballAnalyzer:
		[http] [www.yahoo.com] [foo] [bar.html] 

> analyzer you are using, and also do the same on .toString of the query
> you parsed.  Those two pieces of info will tell all.

"url:www.yahoo* url:www.yahoo* url:www.yahoo* url:www.yahoo* url:www.yahoo* 
url:www.yahoo*"

Well, I actually use a MultiFieldQueryParser, that's probably why the term 
does appear so often. Strange parser, it should be clear that am explicit 
"url:xyz" should only look in the url field, shouldn't it?

Timo

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Re: Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Posted by Erik Hatcher <er...@ehatchersolutions.com>.
On Apr 3, 2004, at 3:19 AM, lucene@nitwit.de wrote:
>> You *can* use wildcards with keywords (in fact, a keyword really has 
>> no
>> meaning once indexed - everything is a "term" at that point).
>
> Well, I just tried. I  also was surprised actually - but it just 
> didn't work.
>
> I can use wildcards for
>
>   doc.add(Field.Text("url", row.getString("url")));
>
> but I cannot for
>
>   doc.add(Field.Keyword("url", row.getString("url")));
>
>>   - create a utility (I've posted one on the list in the past) that
>> shows what your analyzer is doing graphically.
>
> Interesting. Can you give me subject/date of that posting?

AnalysisDemo in this article: 
http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2003/07/30/LuceneIntro.html

Provide us the results of running your url through that, using the same 
analyzer you are using, and also do the same on .toString of the query 
you parsed.  Those two pieces of info will tell all.

	Erik


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Re: Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Posted by lu...@nitwit.de.
On Friday 02 April 2004 23:48, Erik Hatcher wrote:
> On Apr 2, 2004, at 10:00 AM, lucene@nitwit.de wrote:
> > On Saturday 13 March 2004 11:06, Otis Gospodnetic wrote:
> >> Field.Keyword is suitable for storing data like Url.  Give that a try.
> >
> > I just tried this a minute ago and found that I cannot use wildcards
> > with
> > Keywords: url:www.yahoo.*
>
> You *can* use wildcards with keywords (in fact, a keyword really has no
> meaning once indexed - everything is a "term" at that point).

Well, I just tried. I  also was surprised actually - but it just didn't work.

I can use wildcards for

  doc.add(Field.Text("url", row.getString("url")));

but I cannot for

  doc.add(Field.Keyword("url", row.getString("url")));

>   - create a utility (I've posted one on the list in the past) that
> shows what your analyzer is doing graphically.

Interesting. Can you give me subject/date of that posting?

Timo

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Re: Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Posted by Erik Hatcher <er...@ehatchersolutions.com>.
On Apr 2, 2004, at 10:00 AM, lucene@nitwit.de wrote:
> On Saturday 13 March 2004 11:06, Otis Gospodnetic wrote:
>> Field.Keyword is suitable for storing data like Url.  Give that a try.
>
> I just tried this a minute ago and found that I cannot use wildcards 
> with
> Keywords: url:www.yahoo.*

You *can* use wildcards with keywords (in fact, a keyword really has no 
meaning once indexed - everything is a "term" at that point).

99% of the issues people have with things like this end up being 
Analyzer/QueryParser related.

A few quick pieces of advice:

  - use Luke to see what is inside your index and understand what it 
looks like from the inside.
  - create a utility (I've posted one on the list in the past) that 
shows what your analyzer is doing graphically.
  - use Query.toString to output what QueryParser did to your query 
expression.

Armed with the above bits of trivia, you have the information to 
troubleshoot the situation first-hand.

	Erik


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Re: Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Posted by lu...@nitwit.de.
On Saturday 13 March 2004 11:06, Otis Gospodnetic wrote:
> Field.Keyword is suitable for storing data like Url.  Give that a try.

I just tried this a minute ago and found that I cannot use wildcards with 
Keywords: url:www.yahoo.*

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Re: Zero hits for queries ending with a number

Posted by Otis Gospodnetic <ot...@yahoo.com>.
Field.Keyword is suitable for storing data like Url.  Give that a try.

Otis

--- Morris Mizrahi <mm...@zonelabs.com> wrote:
> Hey everyone.
> 
>  
> 
> My document object for my lucene index has a "url" field.
> 
> I have created "url" as a Text field.  
> 
> The problem I am having is that searches with a "url" that end with a
> number, e.g. "e:\k2_beta1", don't return any hits even though there
> is
> data that should match this search criteria. If you have a "url" that
> ends with a letter, e.g. "e:\k2_alpha", the search works fine and
> returns the correct hits.
> 
>  
> 
> Here are some code snippets of my work:
> 
> IndexCreation:
> 
> writer = new IndexWriter("index", new StandardAnalyzer(), true);
> 
>   
> 
> create the "url" as a Text field:
> 
>             doc.add(Field.Text("url", url));
> 
>  
> 
> search code:
> 
>         Analyzer analyzer = new StandardAnalyzer();
> 
>         DateFilter filter = ((SearchForm) form).getDateFilter();
> 
>         Searcher searcher = new
> IndexSearcher(IndexReader.open(indexPath));
> 
>         Query query = QueryParser.parse(terms, "contents", analyzer);
> 
>         Hits hits = searcher.search(query, filter);
> 
>  
> 
> I have tried changing the "url" field from Text to Keyword. 
> 
> This didn't work and also caused my searches for any "url" to fail. 
> 
> I am using lucene 1.2
> 
>  
> 
> I know I need the proper combinations of Analyzer and Field type. 
> 
>  
> 
> Any help would be appreciated.
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks.
> 
>  
> 
>         Morris
> 
>  
> 
> 


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