API Documentation

Classes

ZCatalog

Functions

manage_addZCatalog

Classes

class ZCatalog

ZCatalog object

A ZCatalog contains arbitrary index like references to Zope objects. ZCatalog's can index object attribute using a variety of "plug-in" index types.

Several index types are included, and others may be added.

Text

Text indexes index textual content. The index can be used to search for objects containing certain words.

Field

Field indexes index atomic values. The index can be used to search for objects that have certain properties.

Keyword

Keyword indexes index sequences of values. The index can be used to search for objects that match one or more of the search terms.

Path

Path indexes index URI paths. They allow you to find objects based on their placement in a hierarchy.

Date

Date indexes index date and type data. They are a type of field index specifically optimized for indexing dates.

Date Range

Date range indexes index time intervals. They are designed for efficient searching of dates falling between two boundaries (such as effective / expiration dates).

Topic

Topic indexes store prefiltered sets of documents. They are used to optimize complex queries into a single fast query by prefiltering documents by an expression

The ZCatalog can maintain a table of extra data about cataloged objects. This information can be used on search result pages to show information about a search result.

The meta-data table schema is used to build the schema for ZCatalog Result objects. The objects have the same attributes as the column of the meta-data table.

ZCatalog does not store references to the objects themselves, but rather to a unique identifier that defines how to get to the object. In Zope, this unique identifier is the object's relative path to the ZCatalog (since two Zope objects cannot have the same URL, this is an excellent unique qualifier in Zope).

__module__ = __builtin__

Methods

catalog_object(obj, uid, idxs=None, update_metadata=1):

Catalogs the object obj with the unique identifier uid.

The uid must be a physical path, either absolute or relative to the catalog.

If provided, idxs specifies the names of indexes to update.

If update_metadata is specified (the default), the object's metadata is updated. If it is not, the metadata is left untouched. This flag has no effect if the object is not yet cataloged (metadata is always added for new objects).

reindexIndex(name, REQUEST, pghandler=None):

Reindex a single index.

name

id of index

REQUEST

REQUEST object

pghandler

optional Progresshandler as defined in ProgressHandler.py (see also README.txt)

uniqueValuesFor(name):

returns the unique values for a given FieldIndex named name.

searchResults(REQUEST=None, **kw):

Search the catalog.

Search terms can be passed in the REQUEST or as keyword arguments.

Search queries consist of a mapping of index names to search parameters. You can either pass a mapping to searchResults as the variable REQUEST or you can use index names and search parameters as keyword arguments to the method, in other words:

  searchResults(title='Elvis Exposed',
                author='The Great Elvonso')

is the same as:

  searchResults({'title' : 'Elvis Exposed',
                 'author : 'The Great Elvonso'})

In these examples, title and author are indexes. This query will return any objects that have the title Elvis Exposed AND also are authored by The Great Elvonso. Terms that are passed as keys and values in a searchResults() call are implicitly ANDed together. To OR two search results, call searchResults() twice and add concatenate the results like this:

  results = ( searchResults(title='Elvis Exposed') +
              searchResults(author='The Great Elvonso') )

This will return all objects that have the specified title OR the specified author.

There are some special index names you can pass to change the behavior of the search query:

sort_on

This parameters specifies which index to sort the results on.

sort_order

You can specify reverse or descending. Default behavior is to sort ascending.

sort_limit

An optimization hint to tell the catalog how many results you are really interested in. See the limit argument to the search method for more details.

There are some rules to consider when querying this method:

• an empty query mapping (or a bogus REQUEST) returns all items in the catalog.
• results from a query involving only field/keyword indexes, e.g. {'id':'foo'} and no sort_on will be returned unsorted.
• results from a complex query involving a field/keyword index and a text index, e.g. {'id':foo,'PrincipiaSearchSource':'bar'} and no sort_on will be returned unsorted.
• results from a simple text index query e.g.{'PrincipiaSearchSource':'foo'} will be returned sorted in descending order by score. A text index cannot beused as a sort_on parameter, and attempting to do so will raise an error.

Depending on the type of index you are querying, you may be able to provide more advanced search parameters that can specify range searches or wildcards. These features are documented in The Zope Book.

refreshCatalog(clear=0, pghandler=None):

Reindex every object we can find, removing the unreachable ones from the index.

clear

values: 1|0 clear the catalog before reindexing

pghandler

optional Progresshandler as defined in ProgressHandler.py (see also README.txt)

search(query_request, sort_index=None, reverse=0, limit=None, merge=1):

Programmatic search interface, use for searching the catalog from scripts.

query_request

Dictionary containing catalog query. This uses the same format as searchResults.

sort_index

Name of sort index

reverse

Boolean, reverse sort order (defaults to false)

limit

Limit sorted result count to the n best records. This is an optimization hint used in conjunction with a sort_index. If possible ZCatalog will use a different sort algorithm that uses much less memory and scales better then a full sort. The actual number of records returned is not guaranteed to be <= limit. You still need to apply the same batching to the results. Since the len() of the results will no longer be the actual result count, you can use the "actual_result_count" attribute of the lazy result object instead to determine the size of the full result set.

merge

Return merged, lazy results (like searchResults) or raw results for later merging. This can be used to perform multiple queries (even across catalogs) and merge and sort the combined results.

getpath(rid):

Return the path to a cataloged object given a data_record_id_

indexes():

Returns a sequence of names that correspond to indexes.

getobject(rid, REQUEST=None):

Return a cataloged object given a data_record_id_

index_objects():

Returns a sequence of actual index objects.

NOTE: This returns unwrapped indexes! You should probably use getIndexObjects instead. Some indexes expect to be wrapped.

getIndexObjects():

Returns a list of acquisition wrapped index objects

__call__(REQUEST=None, **kw):

Search the catalog, the same way as searchResults.

uncatalog_object(uid):

Uncatalogs the object with the unique identifier uid.

The uid must be a physical path, either absolute or relative to the catalog.

getrid(rid):

Return the data_record_id_ to a cataloged object given a path

schema():

Get the meta-data schema

Returns a sequence of names that correspond to columns in the meta-data table.

Functions

manage_addZCatalog(id, title, vocab_id=None):

Add a ZCatalog object.

vocab_id

this argument is deprecated and ignored.