Laravel Searchable

Makes models extending the SearchableModel class searchable by indexing them using two database tables and an extensive autmatically generated word list. It uses and improved version of the Metaphone phonetic algorithm, published by Lawrence Philips in 1990. The DoubleMetaphone method tries to account for spelling errors by generating two versions of the phonetic representation of the word. Example model

<?php

use Searchable\Models\SearchableModel;

class Item extends SearchableModel {
	
	/**
	 * The database table used by the model.
	 *
	 * @var string
	 */
	protected $table = 'items';
	
	/**
	 * The attributes that are mass assignable.
	 *
	 * @var array
	 */
	protected $fillable = [ 
		'name', 
		'title',
		'content',
		];
	/**
	 * The attributes that are automatically indexed and searchable.
	 *
	 * @var array
	 */
	protected $searchable = [
		'title' => 20,
		'content' => 5,
		];	

}

Setting up

Update composer.json with the following entries

"require": {
	"rapideinternet/laravel-searchable": "dev-master"
},

"repositories": [
	{
		"type": "vcs",
		"url":  "[email protected]:rapideinternet/laravel-searchable.git"
	}
],

Update your config\app.php

'providers' => [
	...
	'Searchable\SearchableServiceProvider',
],

'aliasses' => [
	...
	'Search'		=> 'Searchable\Facades\Search',
],

Run the following shell commands

composer update
php artisan vendor:publish
php artisan migrate

Update your models by changing the following lines

class Website extends Model {

To extend the SearchableModel class instead of the Model class

class Website extends SearchableModel {

Add an array of searchable attributes. Each attribute carries a weight. More weight means higher relevance.

protected $searchable = [
	'name' => 20,
	'comments' => 5,
	...
];

For example if searching for the word "John", one item may contain 1 occurence of the query in the 'name' attribute while another item contains 3 occurences of the query in the 'comments' attribute.

The result would be that the first item has a score of 20 while the second item has a score of 15 and is ranked lower because the 'name' attirubte is more relevant.

Indexing

Every time a model is saved or stored, it will automatically index the words present in the searchable array. This method is opportunistic and requires you to add new models through the ORM.

###Artisan If you already have data present in your database that you need to index. You can simply run the following command:

php artisan searchable:index

###Scheduler If you want to schedule this index you can add it to the Kernel like this.

protected $commands = [
	...
	'Searchable\Console\Commands\IndexCommand',
];

protected function schedule(Schedule $schedule)
{
	...
	$schedule->command('searchable:index')->dailyAt('4:00');
}