Chapter 1. Setting Up Sphinx

Search is by far the most important feature of an application where data is stored and retrieved. If it hadn't been for search, Google wouldn't exist, so we can imagine the importance of search in the computing world.

Search can be found in the following types of applications:

  • Desktop applications: Where you are the primary, and most often, the only user
  • Web applications: Where the application or website is used and visited by many users

For desktop applications, search is a quick way of locating files. Most desktop applications are not data-oriented, that is, they are not meant to organize and display information. They are rather meant to perform certain tasks, making search a secondary feature.

When using a web application, more often than not, the search becomes a means to navigate the website and look for things that we are interested in, things which are otherwise hidden deep inside the site's structure. Search becomes more important if the web application is full of rich-text content such as blogs, articles, knowledge bases, and so on; where a user needs the search functionality to find a particular piece of information.

In this chapter we will:

  • Discuss different ways to search for data
  • See how Sphinx helps us in achieving our goal
  • Learn how to install Sphinx

So let's get on with it...

What you need to know

For this chapter, it is important that you know basic Linux commands (if you intend to install sphinx on a Linux machine). If you use Windows then you should have a basic idea of how to install programs in Windows.

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