Sphinx search engine

As I was casting about for web-based search solutions several options appeared. My requirements: something configurable that works with PHP and MySQL and that can be integrated into an existing front and back end. Joe Dolson offers a nice PHP search engine. It was relatively easy to set up and modify. A coworker who uses Ruby mentioned Ferret. Reviews of Ferret were mixed and not overly enthusiastic. I decided not to try it, mainly because of the lukewarm reviews and Ruby inexperience. Most recently I've been playing with Sphinx, an open source search engine that works with PHP and MySQL database tables that already contain data. So far the experience in test and set up have been excellent.

One aspect of Sphinx I like is its simplicity. I already have data in MySQL tables. Using a Sphinx configuration file and some commands I tell Sphinx where the data is and how to connect to it, and the Sphinx indexer creates a searchable index. A very straightforward PHP API is available for writing a script to search the index and return results. Are there downsides to Sphinx? So far the documentation I've consulted has been just OK. The Sphinx user/help forum is just OK as well. The search engine used for the forum is not Sphinx. Read into that what you will. On a more detailed level search results returned by Sphinx are contained in a multidimensional array that took some studying. All that said so far I've enjoyed working with Sphinx.

Some material that has been helpful in setting things up:

• Build a custom search engine with PHP
• Invinco articles on Sphinx