AddQuery

AddQuery

Prototype: function AddQuery ( $query, $index=“*”, $comment=“” )

Adds additional query with current settings to multi-query batch. $query is a query string. $index is an index name (or names) string. Additionally if provided, the contents of $comment are sent to the query log, marked in square brackets, just before the search terms, which can be very useful for debugging. Currently, this is limited to 128 characters. Returns index to results array returned from RunQueries().

Batch queries (or multi-queries) enable searchd to perform internal optimizations if possible. They also reduce network connection overheads and search process creation overheads in all cases. They do not result in any additional overheads compared to simple queries. Thus, if you run several different queries from your web page, you should always consider using multi-queries.

For instance, running the same full-text query but with different sorting or group-by settings will enable searchd to perform expensive full-text search and ranking operation only once, but compute multiple group-by results from its output.

This can be a big saver when you need to display not just plain search results but also some per-category counts, such as the amount of products grouped by vendor. Without multi-query, you would have to run several queries which perform essentially the same search and retrieve the same matches, but create result sets differently. With multi-query, you simply pass all these queries in a single batch and Sphinx optimizes the redundant full-text search internally.

AddQuery() internally saves full current settings state along with the query, and you can safely change them afterwards for subsequent AddQuery() calls. Already added queries will not be affected; there's actually no way to change them at all. Here's an example:

$cl->SetSortMode ( SPH_SORT_RELEVANCE );
$cl->AddQuery ( "hello world", "documents" );

$cl->SetSortMode ( SPH_SORT_ATTR_DESC, "price" );
$cl->AddQuery ( "ipod", "products" );

$cl->AddQuery ( "harry potter", "books" );

$results = $cl->RunQueries ();

With the code above, 1st query will search for “hello world” in “documents” index and sort results by relevance, 2nd query will search for “ipod” in “products” index and sort results by price, and 3rd query will search for “harry potter” in “books” index while still sorting by price. Note that 2nd SetSortMode() call does not affect the first query (because it's already added) but affects both other subsequent queries.

Additionally, any filters set up before an AddQuery() will fall through to subsequent queries. So, if SetFilter() is called before the first query, the same filter will be in place for the second (and subsequent) queries batched through AddQuery() unless you call ResetFilters() first. Alternatively, you can add additional filters as well.

This would also be true for grouping options and sorting options; no current sorting, filtering, and grouping settings are affected by this call; so subsequent queries will reuse current query settings.

AddQuery() returns an index into an array of results that will be returned from RunQueries() call. It is simply a sequentially increasing 0-based integer, ie. first call will return 0, second will return 1, and so on. Just a small helper so you won't have to track the indexes manually if you need then.

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