[nodebb-plugin-dbsearch] DB Search Plugin

[moreMix]

Anyone search with chinese or asia characters?
I just can't get any result from searching chinese key word
whatever i reindex or restart nodebb , still get nothing.

[moreMix]

@moreMix said:

Anyone search with chinese or asia characters?
I just can't get any result from searching chinese key word
whatever i reindex or restart nodebb , still get nothing.

bad news......~~ it seems to be redis problem^^,

[julian]

@moremix Yes, Reds is not compatible with non-latin characters, which is why it is no longer bundled with NodeBB. There may be an elasticsearch plugin released soon, and that may support Chinese...

[moreMix]

@julian Thanks! Hope the plugin will be get this done.
Btw, it's posible to change redis to mongoDB can be support chinese easy enough? If it so, would be good.

[julian]

Currently, we do not have tools that support migrating an existing NodeBB installation from Redis to MongoDB (or vice versa)...

[Scuzz]

Any chance to implement searching with symbols?

So say if someone has used hashtag, #ScuzzIsAwesome for example, and we could search for that hashtag. At the moment searching with a symbol does not display any results.

[julian]

Much like how Reds doesn't work with non-latin characters, I'm pretty sure it excises out symbols too

[Scuzz]

@julian I'm on MongoDB, thought it might be different.

[julian]

I thought it would be, actually, since Mongo uses fulltext search. However, keep in mind you have to explicitly enable it per mongo install, it is not enabled by default:

(github.com)

^ Specifically, step 7.

[Scuzz]

Yeah I already have that.
I thought it would have been some sanitation within the db plugin that stopped searching for symbols.
Ok, with more testing it only happens with # and ?
Could this be something to do with URLs?

[julian]

@scuzz I think you may be right about that one.....

search term needs URL escaping · Issue #1195 · NodeBB/NodeBB

Terms including # and ? end up messing up the URL, and search fails.

GitHub (github.com)

[theon]

@julian Hi! I was interested to know more details about why Redis is not compatible with non-latin characters. I though Redis just takes arbitrary bytes as values and you store text encoded however you like (UTF-8 for example).

[theon]

Ah, I think I understand now. It doesn't support searching for non-latin chars, but it does support storing them?

[julian]

@theon Redis does, yes, but by itself, the server does not come with fulltext search capability. To do that, we use a package called Reds, which catalogues and indexes information by phonetic sounds, and only covers the latin charset.

[theon]

@julian Makes sense. It is a key/value store after all and not search index. I think I would prefer a Redis/ElasticSearch combo over MongoDB for my use case. Are your plans to still support Redis alongside MongoDB?

[julian]

@theon So far, yes, I don't see us dropping support for Redis, since NodeBB is already highly optimised for it.

Definitely would advocate for a third party solution like elasticache in conjunction with NodeBB

[Nicekiwi]

Could we get search enabled for guest users?

[finid]

@Ezra-Sharp

In the ACP, there's an option in the General Settings > General page that says Allow guests to search without logging in. Or is that different from what you are asking?

[julian]

Thanks @planner That seems to be what he's asking. Glad we have you around!

[finid]

@julian

No, no no, I'm not trying to apply for a Community Manager's job, but, but, but...