On PHPBuilder.com today there's a new tutorial from Jason Gilmore about using the Zend_Search_Lucene component of the Zend Framework to index and search your data.

In this article I'll show you how to undertake the former approach using PHP's most prominent Lucene implementation, which also happens to be part of the Zend Framework: the Zend_Search_Lucene component.

After briefly introducing the Zend_Search_Lucene component he gets to a practical use - being able to search through submitted information on any and all fields quickly. He includes the code to insert the information into the Lucene data and how to search and retrieve it back out the other side. He also includes a brief example of indexing on a certain field to make it even faster.

New on the Zend Developer Zone is this new tutorial about combining the Sphinx and the Zend Framework to search and index email messages from a remote mailbox. He'll also compare it to the Zend Framwork Lucene indexing tool.

Over the next few pages, I'll run you through what I did and the steps I took to index a large email collection with Sphinx. I'll also try the same thing with another very common text search engine, the Zend Framework's Lucene implementation, in order to compare and contrast the differences between the two approaches.

The tutorial shows how to install the PEAR packages needed to access the mailbox, includes a quick look at installing Sphinx and the code to create the searchable index (and perform a search) for each tool. Screenshots are included so you can see the desired results.

On the Zend Developer Zone today there's a new tutorial posted that shows how to use the Zend_Search_Lucene component of the Zend Framework to create a stemming analyzer.

The Zend implementation of Lucene provides a powerful tool set for those looking to implement a Google-like search for their PHP web application. One of the requirements in creating a Google-like search with Zend is the creation of a stemming, stop word filtering, lower-casing analyzer. This article will briefly discuss the basic role of an analyzer in the Lucene API, my implementation of a new "StandardAnalyzer" for the Zend_Search_Lucene component of the Zend Framework, the inner workings of this analyzer, and its basic usage.

It talks about the creation of an analyzer - a tool that splits out words, removes some of the most common and standardizes the contents (like making it all lowercase such as the StandardAnalyzer in Java's Lucene does). The author has come up with his own implementation in PHP and works through it, explaining how it works and where to put the data and language files it would need to pull from.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted about some of their (Zend's) upcoming webcasts/webinars for the next two months:

On a regular basis, Zend hosts free Webinars on a variety of Zend and PHP related topics. They keep a lost of them over at the Zend site but occasionally, I like to list them here to make sure all DevZone readers are aware of them.

The list includes:

• Zend Studio Neon Beta Overview (Oct 17)
• PHP4 to PHP5 Migration (Oct 24)
• Zend Framework Database Access (Oct 31)
• Improve your PHP Application's Search Capabilities with Lucene (Nov 7)
• Building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) with PHP and Zend Framework (Nov 14)
• PHP Security Basics (Nov 28)

Both the pages for each of the webinars and the Zend Developer Zone post have summaries of what each is about.

Rob Allen quickly points out a tool that Lucene users (Zend Framework and otherwise) can use to check out the contents of their indexing files.

If you want to understand what's in your Zend_Search_Lucene index files, then download Luke (http://www.getopt.org/luke/) and point it at the directory containing your index files.

He also includes a screenshot to give you an idea of the interface.

Luke bills itself as: "a handy development and diagnostic tool, which accesses already existing Lucene indexes and allows you to display and modify their contents in several ways [including] view documents / copy to clipboard, selectively delete documents from the index and optimize indexes".

On the SpinDrop blog today, Dave Dash continues his look at the Lucene search engine for the Zend Framework with this new post showing how to boost certain terms' relevance in the search results.

Lucene supports boosting or weighting terms. For example, if I search for members of a web site, and I type in Dash, I want people with the name Dash to take precedence over somebody who has a hobby of running the 50-yard Dash.

He shows how to, with the help of a few simple lines of PHP code added to your application, you can easily boost terms based on field by whatever multiplier you choose.

On the Spindrop Blog today, there's the series wrapup for their look at using the Zend Search Lucene functionality inside of a Symfony application.

This is part of an on going series about the Zend Search Lucene libraries and symfony. We'll pretty everything up when we're done. We now know how to manipulate the index via our model classes. But let's actually do something useful with our search engine...let's search!

This quick post shows how to initialize the object and run the find() on the data and fetch out the results. They even work the script so that, if the index for the search isn't there, it generates it on the fly, then makes the search.

In a sort of follow up to a previous post about implementing the entire Zend Framework inside a module for Symfony, Dave Dash is back with this new post showing how to put it into practice - creating a search engine using the Lucene functionality the Zend Framework offers.

In this tutorial we're going to delve into the Lucene index. Zend Search Lucene relies on building a Lucene index. This is a directory that contains files that can be indexed and queried by Lucene or other ports. In our example we'll be creating a search for user profiles.

He shows the structure of where the index can go and, of course, the code to get it there. He also includes a simple script for the other piece of the puzzle - the search itself.

As mentioned by the Zend Developer Zone today, this new article over on Spindrop.us talks about a "cross-pollination" or sorts using the Zend Search Lucene module inside of a Symfony application.

If you're like me you've probably followed the Askeet tutorial on Search in order to create a decent search engine for your web app. It's fairly straight forward, but they hinted that when Zend Search Lucene (ZSL) is released, that might be the way to go. Well we are in luck, ZSL is available, so let's just dive right in.

If you aren't using symfony have a look at this article from the Zend Developer Zone. It covers just enough to get you started. If you are using symfony, just follow along and we'll get you where you need to go.

It's a detailed tutorial starting with the install and usaage of the Zend Lucene module, how to use it, how to make a search inside it, adding new users to the results, and exporting the new ZSL document on change - all from inside of Symfony.

Giving your users a tool to find relevant invormation from the vast ocean that is the content of your site isn't easy sometimes. Even with the powerful combination of PHP and MySQL, it can be difficult to find what you're looking for. Wolfgang Drews shares in some of this frustration in his new blog post.

His other suggestions include the use of two other tables (terms in one, references back to content in another) or an external search option, such as the Zend Framework's implementation of the lucene functionality - Zend_Search.