Ferret

Ferret is a Ruby search library inspired by the Apache Lucene search engine for Java (jakarta.apache.org/lucene/). In the same way as Lucene, it is not a standalone application, but a library you can use to index documents and search for things in them later.

Requirements

Installation

$ sudo gem install ferret

If you don't have rubygems installed you can still install Ferret. Just download one of the zipped up versions of Ferret, unzip it and change into the unzipped directory. Then run the following set of commands;

$ ruby setup.rb config
$ ruby setup.rb setup
$ sudo ruby setup.rb install

Usage

You can read the TUTORIAL which you'll find in the same directory as this README. You can also check the following modules for more specific documentation.

Performance

We are unaware of any alternatives that can out-perform Ferret while still matching it in features.

Contact

For bug reports and patches I have set up Trac here;

http://ferret.davebalmain.com/trac

Queries, discussion etc should be addressed to the mailing lists here;

http://rubyforge.org/projects/ferret/

Alternatively you could create a new page for discussion on the Ferret wiki;

http://ferret.davebalmain.com/trac

Of course, since Ferret was ported from Apache Lucene, most of what you can do with Lucene you can also do with Ferret.

Authors

David Balmain

Port to Ruby

The Apache Software Foundation (Doug Cutting and friends)

Original Apache Lucene

License

Ferret is available under an MIT-style license.

Copyright © 2005-2006 David Balmain

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.