Advanced, faceted search with the easy-to-install Search Lucene API module

Despite its importance, search is often an afterthought when building a Drupal site. The core Search module lacks the features and and advanced syntax to be a viable solution, yet the complexity and unwieldy installations of other contributed search modules often leave developers with little choice. Search Lucene API is an easy-to-install, configurable module that brings an alternative solution within any developer's reach.

Lucene is the most advanced open source search engine library to date. Although the Java implementation is found in many projects such as Apache Solr, Search Lucene API is built on top of the Zend Framework's PHP port of Lucene. Since the library is built into the module, there is no need to configure Java or any external services.

After attending the session, attendees will know how to install and configure Search Lucene API so they can quickly implement it in their sites. I will give a high-level overview of some of the advanced features that Search Lucene API has to offer such as the following:

• Wildcard searches
• Proximity searches
• Fuzzy searches
• Range searches
• The ability to easily create and manage facets
• Word stemming
• Partial word matches

I will also introduce some of the contributed modules built on top of Search Lucene API that provide additional functionality often required by sites using advanced searches. At the end of the presentation, I will touch on some of the hooks exposed by Search Lucene API to illustrate how the module can be extended.