What to expect in Sphider 2.4.0

Sphider 2.4.0 is on track for an April 10th release. For the user, the changes are focused on cosmetics. Up until this point, search results ALWAYS had a result number and, after the description, a text url to the page containing the search result. In 2.4.0, you will have the option to either display or not to display those items. Also, the option to display the page’s indexing date has been added.

As to search templates, what were probably seven of the crappiest, lamest templates to have ever seen the light of day have been scrapped. Seven NEW templates are being introduced. Depending on your tastes, you might consider some of them crappy, too, but at least they have a bit of style to them. The “newspaper” template was introduced in an earlier post. Here are the other six:

“black” template
“green” template
“grey” template
“simple” template
“terminal” template
“yellow” template

The “green” style is, well, VERY GREEN! The purpose isn’t so much for actual use as to demonstrate the ability and flexibility of CSS in creating your own templates, even using an image as a border.

The “yellow” template features a bit of simple artwork in the upper left corner. This artwork is “logo.png”, located in the templates/yellow directory. The size is 150×150 and has a transparent background. By creating your own similarly sized logo/picture/artwork, and replacing “logo.png”, this template can be customized for your website.

Since everyone has different tastes, different needs, and every website is somewhat unique, these templates can serve as guides in customizing your own templates. With all the above, the ONLY thing different is the CSS.  Start with a copy of the “standard” template and start tweaking away! The basic Sphider modules remain the same.

Additionally in Sphider 2.4.0, the ‘settings’ table has been completely reworked. While this change is transparent to the user, it will make life much easier on the developer as Sphider moves forward.

Besides some minor fixes and tweaks, the only other big change is in the word stemming process. While the majority of Sphider users probably never use word stemming, those who do will be pleased to learn that the algorithm (for English) has been updated to Porter2. Completely new is the ability to use stemming for ten other languages!

2 Replies to “What to expect in Sphider 2.4.0”

  1. In running Sphider form the command line (2.3.1), I came across a couple of bugs in spider.php (I tried using the contact form, but it wasn’t working.)

    First, I have line 19:
    $_SESSION[‘keyset’] = md5(session_id().$_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’].rand());

    This was completely failing from the command line. I changed it to this to get the code to run:
    $_SESSION[‘keyset’] = md5(session_id().(isset($_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’])?$_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’]:’127.0.0.1′).rand());

    Next, when using -r from the command line, the code halts without displaying an error. When I turn on error reporting it complains that fetch_array cannot be called on a boolean.

    This is happening somewhere around line 140. As it turns out, you’re fetching the results for the previous SQL statement before executing the statement. Simple enough fix.

    If you already caught these for your next release, that’s awesome, but I thought I’d let you know.

    I’m currently trying to figure out how to tweak the code to allow me to reindex only a single page so that I can hook in to a custom wiki and not reindex the entire site every time there is a little change. Eventually, that’s not going to scale well. If you already have a solution for that, I’d be happy to hear about it, but I don’t believe there is one, but it looks doable with a few tweaks. I’ll let you know what I end up doing. (It probably won’t be what everyone using the package now will want, but I know I’m not the only one who has wanted this.)

    1. First, I have line 19:
      $_SESSION[‘keyset’] = md5(session_id().$_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’].rand());

      LOL! Talk about timing! I was just looking at, and correcting, that very thing!!!
      [UPDATE] This also has been fixed in auth.php and rss_spider.

      This is happening somewhere around line 140. As it turns out, you’re fetching the results for the previous SQL statement before executing the statement. Simple enough fix.

      Okay. I’ll look into this one. Really appreciate the heads up! Thanks!
      [UPDATE] Good grief! I must have been cross-eyed the day I did that! Fixed. Thanks.

      I’m currently trying to figure out how to tweak the code to allow me to reindex only a single page so that I can hook in to a custom wiki and not reindex the entire site every time there is a little change. Eventually, that’s not going to scale well. If you already have a solution for that, I’d be happy to hear about it, but I don’t believe there is one, but it looks doable with a few tweaks. I’ll let you know what I end up doing. (It probably won’t be what everyone using the package now will want, but I know I’m not the only one who has wanted this.)

      As you say, probably not what most people would be needing, but if you can get that done with tweaks it would make a great mod. You could then maybe share with others in the ‘Sphider MODS’ board in the forum?

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