Question

I have a database that I would like to leverage with Zend_Search_Lucene. However, I am having difficulty creating a “fully searchable” document for Lucene.

Each Zend_Search_Lucene document pulls information from two relational database tables (Table_One and Table_Two). Table_One has basic information (id, owner_id, title, description, location, etc.), Table_Two has a 1:N relationship to Table_One (meaning, for each entry in Table_One, there could be one or more entries in Table_Two). Table_Two contains: id, listing_id, bedrooms, bathrooms, price_min, price_max, date_available. See Figure 1.

Figure 1

Table_One
    id (Primary Key)
    owner_id
    title
    description
    location
    etc...

Table_Two
    id (Primary Key)
    listing_id (Foreign Key to Table_One)
    bedrooms (int)
    bathrooms (int)
    price_min (int)
    price_max (int)
    date_available (datetime)

The problem is, there are multiple Table_Two entries for each Table_One entry. [Question 1] How to create a Zend_Search_Lucene document where each field is unique? (See Figure 2)

Figure 2

Lucene Document
    id:Keyword
    owner_id:Keyword
    title:UnStored
    description:UnStored
    location: UnStored
    date_registered:Keyword
    ... (other Table_One information)
    bedrooms: UnStored
    bathrooms: UnStored
    price_min: UnStored
    price_max: UnStored
    date_available: Keyword
    bedrooms_1: <- Would prefer not to have do this as this makes the bedrooms harder to search.

Next, I need to be able to do a Range Query on the bedrooms, bathrooms, price_min and price_max fields. (Example: finding documents that have between 1 and 3 bedrooms) Zend_Search_Lucene will only allow ranged searches on the same field. From my understanding, this means each field I want to do a ranged query on can only contain one value (example: bedrooms:”1 bedroom”);

What I have now, within the Lucene Document is the bedrooms, bathrooms, price_min, price_max, date_available fields being space delimited.

Example:

Sample Table_One Entry: 
    | 5 | 2 | "Sample Title" | "Sample Description" | "Sample Location" | 2008-01-12

Sample Table_Two Entries:
    | 10 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 900 | 1000 | 2009-10-01
    | 11 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 800 | 850 | 2009-08-11
    | 12 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 650 | 650 | 2009-09-15 

Sample Lucene Document

id:5
owner_id:2
title: "Sample Title"
description: "Sample Description"
location: "Sample Location"
date_registered: [datetime stamp YYYY-MM-DD]
bedrooms: "3 bedroom 2 bedroom 1 bedroom" 
bathrooms: "1 bathroom 1 bathroom 1 bathroom"
price_min: "900 800 650"
price_max: "1000 850 650"
date_available: "2009-10-01 2009-08-11 2009-09-15"

[Question 2] Can you do a Range Query search on the bedroom, bathroom, price_min, price_max, date_available fields as they are shown above or does each range query field have to contain only one value (e.g. “1 bedroom”)? I have not been able to get the Range Query to work in its current form. I am at a lose here.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

1. I suggest you create a separate Lucene document for each entry in Table_Two. This will cause some duplication of the Table_One information common to these entries, but this is not a high price to pay for much easier index structure in Lucene.
2. Use a boolean query to combine several range queries. The number-valued fields should be something like this:

bedrooms: 3

price_min: 900

and a sample query in Lucene syntax will be:

date_available:[20100101 TO 20100301] AND price_min:[600 TO 1000]