A request came In from a client. I was asked to add search functionality to their existing site. Initially the plan was to write long, complicated sql queries with enough joins and sub-selects to make your nose bleed.

Before starting, I wondered if there were any alternative solutions. The site itself is a .Net site with a flash front end and a MySQL database. So naturally, i needed something that i could interface with using C# and MySQL.

Behold, a short google later I came across a free, open source and bloody good search engine called Apache Lucene.

“Apache Lucene is a high-performance, full-featured text search engine library written entirely in Java. It is a technology suitable for nearly any application that requires full-text search, especially cross-platform.”

Fortunately, some very nice and clever people have ported it over to .Net (DotLucene) so I now had a search engine i could use with C# and MySQL.

To top it all, the nice people at DotLucene have also put together a simple tutorial to get you started.

The system has its drawbacks, most notably is the inability to do a wildcard search from the first character. e.g. searching for *ordpress would throw an exception. So you will have to implement workarounds to this and other situations. There is API documentation and a fairly active mailing list to provide help.

I am still relatively new to Lucene so as this project develops i will post any useful nuggets of information to help you along.