GroupDocs.Search for .NET 17.01 Release Notes

This page contains release notes for GroupDocs.Search for .NET 17.1

Major Features

There are 4 features in this regular monthly release. The most notable are:

Implement correcting words in search query before searching
Implement Alias Dictionary functionality
Implement Homophone Dictionary functionality
Implement Merge Indexes functionality

All Changes

Key	Summary	Category
SEARCHNET-445	Implement correcting words in search query before searching	New Feature
SEARCHNET-703	Implement Alias Dictionary functionality	New Feature
SEARCHNET-704	Implement Homophone Dictionary functionality	New Feature
SEARCHNET-177	Implement Merge Indexes functionality	New Feature

Public API and Backward Incompatible Changes

This section lists public API changes that were introduced in GroupDocs.Search for .NET 17.1. It includes not only new and obsoleted public methods, but also a description of any changes in the behavior behind the scenes in GroupDocs.Search which may affect existing code. Any behavior introduced that could be seen as a regression and modifies existing behavior is especially important and is documented here.

Implement correcting words in search query before searching

This feature allows correcting misspelled words in a query before performing the search.
Spelling corrector supports 4 types of mistakes:

insertion of a single character
deletion of a single character
substitution of a single character
transposition of two adjacent characters
Spelling corrector supports up to 3 mistakes for each word in a query. The increase of error count increases the time of the search.
Spelling corrector has default collection of English words but the user can modify the collection.

Public API Changes
Class SpellingCorrectorParameters class has been added to GroupDocs.Search namespace.
Property GroupDocs.Search.SpellingCorrectorParameters SpellingCorrector has been added to GroupDocs.Search.SearchParameters class.
Class SpellingCorrector has been added to GroupDocs.Search namespace.
Property GroupDocs.Search.SpellingCorrector SpellingCorrector has been added to GroupDocs.Search.DictionaryCollection class.

This example shows how to use Spelling Corrector:

string indexFolder = @"c:\MyIndex";
string documentsFolder = @"c:\MyDocuments";

Index index = new Index(indexFolder);
index.AddToIndex(documentsFolder);

SearchParameters parameters = new SearchParameters();
parameters.SpellingCorrector.Enabled = true; // Enabling spelling corrector
parameters.SpellingCorrector.MaxMistakeCount = 1; // The default value for maximum mistake count is 2

SearchResults results = index.Search("strukture", parameters); // Search for misspelled term 'structure'

This example shows how to manage dictionary of Spelling Corrector:

string indexFolder = @"c:\MyIndex";
string documentsFolder = @"c:\MyDocuments";

Index index = new Index(indexFolder);
index.AddToIndex(documentsFolder);

index.Dictionaries.SpellingCorrector.Clear(); // Remove all words from spelling corrector dictionary
index.Dictionaries.SpellingCorrector.Import(@"c:\MySpellingDictionary.txt"); // Import spelling dictionary from file. Existing words are staying.
string[] words = new string[] { "structure", "building", "rail", "house" };
index.Dictionaries.SpellingCorrector.AddRange(words); // Add word array to the dictionary. Words are case insensitive.
index.Dictionaries.SpellingCorrector.Export(@"c:\MyExportedSpellingDictionary.txt"); // Export spelling dictionary to file.

SearchParameters parameters = new SearchParameters();
parameters.SpellingCorrector.Enabled = true; // Enabling spelling corrector
parameters.SpellingCorrector.MaxMistakeCount = 1; // The default value for maximum mistake count is 2

SearchResults results = index.Search("strukture", parameters); // Search for misspelled term 'structure'

The imported dictionary must contain in each line one word. This example shows the content of “c:\MySpellingDictionary.txt” file:

newspaper
opera
sensibility

Implement Alias Dictionary functionality

This feature allows using abbreviations for frequent long queries.
Abbreviation (alias) must start with @ character in a query.
Nested abbreviations are not supported, so abbreviations inside of other abbreviation will not be recognized.

Public API Changes
Class AliasDictionary has been added to GroupDocs.Search namespace.
Property GroupDocs.Search.AliasDictionary AliasDictionary has been added to GroupDocs.Search.DictionaryCollection class.

This example shows how to add one alias to the dictionary before search:

string indexFolder = @"c:\MyIndex";
string documentsFolder = @"c:\MyDocuments";

Index index = new Index(indexFolder);
index.AddToIndex(documentsFolder);

index.Dictionaries.AliasDictionary.Add("s", "structure"); // Add alias 's' to the dictionary

SearchResults results = index.Search("@s"); // Search for term 'structure'

This example shows how to use Alias Dictionary:

string indexFolder = @"c:\MyIndex";
string documentsFolder = @"c:\MyDocuments";
string searchQuery = "@s";
string aliasesFileName = @"c:\MyAliases.txt";

Index index = new Index(indexFolder);
index.AddToIndex(documentsFolder);

index.Dictionaries.AliasDictionary.Clear(); // Clear dictionary of aliases
index.Dictionaries.AliasDictionary.Add("s", "structure"); // Add alias 's' to the dictionary. Alias and aliased text are case insensitive.
index.Dictionaries.AliasDictionary.Remove("x"); // Remove alias 'x' from the dictionary. Words which are absent will be ignored.
index.Dictionaries.AliasDictionary.Import(aliasesFileName); // Import aliases from file. Existing aliases are staying.
index.Dictionaries.AliasDictionary.Export(@"c:\MyExportedAliases.txt"); // Export aliases to file

SearchResults results = index.Search(searchQuery); // Search for term 'structure'

This example shows the content of “MyAliases.txt” file:

@y
example

@z
example AND usage

Implement Homophone Dictionary functionality

This feature allows to manage the list of heterographic homophones and use it to improve search results.
Users can change the list of homophones before searching.
Homophone dictionary has default collection of English homophones but the user can modify the collection.

Public API Changes
Class HomophoneDictionary has been added to GroupDocs.Search namespace.
Property GroupDocs.Search.HomophoneDictionary HomophoneDictionary has been added to GroupDocs.Search.DictionaryCollection class.
Property bool UseHomophoneSearch has been added to GroupDocs.Search.SearchParameters class.

This example shows how to use Homophone Search:

string indexFolder = @"c:\MyIndex";
string documentsFolder = @"c:\MyDocuments";
string searchQuery = "pause";

Index index = new Index(indexFolder);
index.AddToIndex(documentsFolder);

SearchParameters parameters = new SearchParameters();
parameters.UseHomophoneSearch = true; // Enable homophone search in parameters

SearchResults results = index.Search(searchQuery , parameters); // Search for "pause", "paws", "pores", "pours"

This example shows how to manage Homophone dictionary:

string indexFolder = @"c:\MyIndex";
string documentsFolder = @"c:\MyDocuments";
string searchQuery = "pause";
string homophonesFileName = @"c:\MyHomophones.txt";

Index index = new Index(indexFolder);
index.AddToIndex(documentsFolder);

// Clearing homophone dictionary
index.Dictionaries.HomophoneDictionary.Clear();

// Adding homophones
string[] homophoneGroup1 = new string[] {"braise", "brays", "braze" };
string[] homophoneGroup2 = new string[] {"pause", "paws", "pores", "pours" };
List<string[]> homophoneGroups = new List<string[]>();
homophoneGroups.Add(homophoneGroup1);
homophoneGroups.Add(homophoneGroup2);
index.Dictionaries.HomophoneDictionary.AddRange(homophoneGroups);

index.Dictionaries.HomophoneDictionary.Import(homophonesFileName); // Import homophones from file. Existing homophones are staying.
index.Dictionaries.HomophoneDictionary.Export(@"c:\MyExportedHomophones.txt"); // Export homophones to file

SearchParameters parameters = new SearchParameters();
parameters.UseHomophoneSearch = true; // Enable homophone search in parameters

SearchResults results = index.Search(searchQuery , parameters); // Search for "pause", "paws", "pores", "pours"

This example shows the content of the “MyHomophones.txt” file:

alms
arms

altar
alter

bight
bite
byte

Implement Merge Indexes functionality

This feature allows merging two or more indexes to one.
If the index is updated frequently, it has several delta indexes and Merging functionality can be used to merge all delta indexes in one for search performance improvement.
After performing Merge, the main index will contain all the information from the merged indexes, but the indexes are merged remain unchanged.
Merging works for indexes v17.1 and later.

Public API changes
Method Merge has been added to GroupDocs.Index class.
Method MergeAsync has been added to GroupDocs.Index class.
Value MergingFinished has been added to GroupDocs.Search.Events.OperationType enum.

This example shows how to merge index with delta indexes to improve search performance:

string indexName = "MyIndex";
string myDocumentsFolder1 = @"c:\My Documents1\";
string myDocumentsFolder2 = @"c:\My Documents2\";

// Creating index
Index index = new Index(indexName, true);

// Adding documents to index
index.AddToIndex(myDocumentsFolder1);

// Adding one more folder to index. Delta index will be created.
index.AddToIndex(myDocumentsFolder2);

// Run merging
index.Merge();

This example shows how to merge several indexes:

// Creating/loading first index
Index index1 = new Index(@"c:\MyIndex1");
index1.AddToIndex(@"c:\MyDocuments1");

// Creating/loading second index
Index index2 = new Index(@"c:\MyIndex2");
index2.AddToIndex(@"c:\MyDocuments2");

index1.Merge(index2); // Merging data from index2 to index1. The index2 remains unchanged.

The following is an example of Merging current index with index repository:

IndexRepository indexRepository = new IndexRepository();
Index index1 = indexRepository.Create("IndexForMerging1");
index1.AddToIndex(@"c:\MyDocuments1");

Index index2 = indexRepository.Create("IndexForMerging2");
index2.AddToIndex(@"c:\MyDocuments2");

Index mainIndex = new Index("MainIndexName");
mainIndex.AddToIndex(@"c:\MyDocuments3");

// Merge data from indexes in repository to main index. After merge index repository stays unmodified.
mainIndex.Merge(indexRepository);

This example shows how to merge index with delta indexes asynchronously to improve search performance:

string indexName = "MyIndex";
string myDocumentsFolder1 = @"c:\My Documents1\";
string myDocumentsFolder2 = @"c:\My Documents2\";

// Creating index
Index index = new Index(indexName, true);

// Adding documents to index
index.AddToIndex(myDocumentsFolder1);

// Adding one more folder to index. Delta index will be created.
index.AddToIndex(myDocumentsFolder2);

// Run merging asynchonously
index.MergeAsync();

This example shows how to merge several indexes asynchronously:

// Creating/loading first index
Index index1 = new Index(@"c:\MyIndex1");
index1.AddToIndex(@"c:\MyDocuments1");

// Creating/loading second index
Index index2 = new Index(@"c:\MyIndex2");
index2.AddToIndex(@"c:\MyDocuments2");

index1.MergeAsync(index2); // Merging data from index2 to index1. The index2 remains unchanged.

The following is an example of Merging current index with index repository asynchronously:

IndexRepository indexRepository = new IndexRepository();
Index index1 = indexRepository.Create("IndexForMerging1");
index1.AddToIndex(@"c:\MyDocuments1");

Index index2 = indexRepository.Create("IndexForMerging2");
index2.AddToIndex(@"c:\MyDocuments2");

Index mainIndex = new Index("MainIndexName");
mainIndex.AddToIndex(@"c:\MyDocuments3");

// Merge data from indexes in repository to main index. After merge index repository stays unmodified.
mainIndex.MergeAsync(indexRepository);