Monthly Archives: April 2011

PHP, Xapian and… pointers ?

Posted by Geert Van Damme on April 21, 2011 None comments

I just discovered some weird behaviour using Xapian in PHP, and I think it has something to do with pointers. I tried adding two XapianDateValueRangeProcessors as follows :

$qp->add_valuerangeprocessor(new XapianDateValueRangeProcessor(0, 'created:', true, false, 1970));
$qp->add_valuerangeprocessor(new XapianDateValueRangeProcessor(1, 'updated:', true, false, 1970));

But somehow this would break Xapian (I didn’t get any error, this script just stopped completely when parsing the query).
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Searching date ranges in Xapian and PHP

Posted by Geert Van Damme on April 19, 2011 None comments

I have not much experience with Xapian, so the following post might seem trivial to some. But it took me some time to figure this out, so I might as well share my findings. After running some basic examples from the Xapian wiki (which worked out of the box), I needed to be able to search for a range of dates (e.g. date created from – to). After reading the very interesting article on the Xapian Search Architecture, I realised I needed to add a value to the document which contained the date field, opposed to the terms I had been adding. So, while indexing, I added following code :

$doc = new XapianDocument();
// some code ommitted such as adding terms, setting data, ...
$doc->add_value(0, '20110101');
// some more code ommitted such as indexing the text - see examples

The first parameter defines the value slot which you want to use. This is just a number, look at it as an index of the value. You will reuse this index when searching, so it’s best to create a constant for each index regarding readability. Other than this, you create and index the document as explained in the examples.
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Generating Microsoft Excel files in PHP

Posted by Geert Van Damme on April 16, 2011 None comments

I recently tried the pear package for generating excel files (Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer), and the first tests were very positive. I created a very basic class to create new sheets and add new data based upon an array. I will expand this class in the future when needed, e.g. to add images.
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Using Xapian on OS-X with MAMP

Posted by Geert Van Damme on April 15, 2011 2 comments

I just compiled and installed Xapian on my MacBook Pro (OS-X 10.6.6) using the instructions from the Xapian installation guide. The first time I compiled Xapian, everything looked ok, but when I tried to run the extension, it appeared to be compiled in the wrong OS Architecture (64-bit, which is the default for gcc aparently, while MAMP and its PHP5 version are compiled in 32-bit). So make sure you add the CXX='g++ -m32' option when you run ./configure. If you are not sure if the extension is built in 32-bit, just check by running 

file xapian.so

on the resulting xapian.so file after the build, which should result in something like this : 

$ file xapian.so
xapian.so: Mach-O bundle i386

Here’s the sequence for building the Xapian core and bindings (make sure you download and use the latest stable Xapian version) :

curl -O http://oligarchy.co.uk/xapian/1.1.4/xapian-core-1.1.4.tar.gz

curl -O http://oligarchy.co.uk/xapian/1.1.4/xapian-bindings-1.1.4.tar.gz

tar xvzf xapian-core-1.1.4.tar.gz

tar xvzf xapian-bindings-1.1.4.tar.gz

cd xapian-core-1.1.4

./configure CXX='g++ -m32'

make

sudo make install

cd ..

cd xapian-bindings-1.1.4

./configure CXX='g++ -m32' --with-php

make

sudo make install

cd ..

rm xapian-core-1.1.4.tar.gz

rm xapian-bindings-1.1.4.tar.gz

This will install the PHP bindings with the default OS-X Apache and PHP version, but as I am using MAMP for my development, I will need to perform some extra steps.
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Logorama movie

Posted by Geert Van Damme on April 7, 2011 None comments

Here’s another very nice 3D movie I found on the net :

http://www.baekdal.com/design/logorama-pulp-fiction-for-brands

But I must warn you, there might be some hidden publicity in the movie…

Galapagos

Posted by Geert Van Damme on April 5, 2011 None comments

Some pictures we took on our honeymoon in Galapagos.

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Order tracking @ foto.com

Posted by Geert Van Damme on April 4, 2011 None comments

I just ordered a photobook at foto.com (Belgium), and I was pleasantly surprised with the order tracking page :

I’m just disappointed they don’t show the names of the people working on my product, so I can send them a thank-you-note ;-)