Global search with multiple indexes using Thinking Sphinx

Question

I wan't to make a global search on a set of classes but I would like to specify an array of indexes it should use, is this possible? I have googled and tried different solutions but no luck yet.

This works correctly (for one index though).

ThinkingSphinx.search "query", :classes => [Foo, Bar], :index => "my_foo_index"

This throws an error:

ThinkingSphinx.search "query", :classes => [Foo, Bar], :index => "my_foo_index,my_bar_index"
> ThinkingSphinx::SphinxError: distributed index 'my_foo_index' in multi-index query found

As do this:

ThinkingSphinx.search "query", :classes => [Foo, Bar], :index => ["my_foo_index", "my_bar_index"]
> NoMethodError: undefined method `force_encoding' for ["my_foo_index", "my_bar_index"]:Array

I also tried to name the models index the same, like "my_index" on both the Foo-model and the Bar-model but then I got this error when rebuilding the index:

ERROR: section 'my_index_core_0' (type='source') already exists in /dev/config/development.sphinx.conf line 116 col 1.

The only solution I can come up with is to do multiple searches for each model and then merge the results. That blows a little though since I will loose relevance in the search...

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Try the following:

ThinkingSphinx.search 'query', :classes => [Foo, Bar],
  :index => 'my_foo_index_core,my_bar_index_core'

If you have deltas, add my_foo_index_delta and my_bar_index_delta to the list as well. That'll avoid the distributed indices.