Lucene in action
by Michael McCandless · first published 2010
83% recommend17% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Explains how Lucene works and how to use it well, serving as a solid introduction for developers building search. Remains useful for its era and pairs well with Solr and relevance work.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"When Lucene first hit the scene five years ago, it was nothing short of amazing. By using this open-source, highly scalable, super-fast search engine, developers could integrate search into applications quickly and efficiently. A lot has changed since then-search has grown from a 'nice-to-have' feature into an indispensable part of most enterprise applications. Lucene now powers search in diverse companies including Akamai, Netflix, LinkedIn, Technorati, HotJobs, Epiphany, FedEx, Mayo Clinic, MIT, New Scientist Magazine, and many others. Some things remain the same, though. Lucene still deliv
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…to effectively use a search engine to improve relevance (as opposed to how to implement a search engine). It's old, but another book in that vein that was really helpful for me earlier in my career is Lucene in Action: https://www.amazon.com/Lucene-Action-Second-Covers-Apache/dp...
on “Ask HN: Books about full text search?” ↗…it's some versions behind. An alternative to CLucene and also native C++ is Sphinx search (similar to CLucene what Nginx is to Apache). Also SQLite has an official full text search addon named FTS4. Lucene in Action 1st and 2nd edition are great books, I have them both. The first edition was like the missing manual and it covers the API of the Lucene 1.4 with its rather rough API objects. Lucene 2.x+ API improved…
on “Lucene: The Good Parts” ↗This is a good opportunity to update my search reading list. Books * Lucene in Action - A bit out of date, but it has a lot of the core concepts of Lucene. 10 years ago, this was the go-to book even if you’re working with Solr or Elasticsearch, to understand the core data structures *…
on “Ask HN: I want to dive into how to make search engines” ↗Well yes a ton :) And these are the ones off the top of my head... others feel free to list ones I'm missing Books: Lucene in Action http://manning.com/books/lucene-in-action Solr in Action https://www.manning.com/books/solr-in-action Relevant Search http://manning.com/books/relevant-search (disclaimer, my book) Elasticsearch Definitive…
on “Google may rank sites for queries that don't appear on the page at all” ↗…level "wrappers" around Lucene such as Solr/ElasticSearch were so much easier to get started with and scaled up (and in many ways, more idiot-proof), even as someone who was not a novice to the field. Lucene in Action was an incredible book though, esp. given the time when it came out, and somehow has remained quite relevant through the years too! Strong recommend!
on “Lucene: The Good Parts (2015)” ↗…of contents of those books. Courses which mention chapters or sections from them are probably a good choice. You can also check Apache Lucene and do a deep dive to see state-of-the-art implementation (Lucene in Action is a good introduction).
on “Ask HN: I want to dive into how to make search engines” ↗Take a look at my post “Lucene: The Good Parts”— https://blog.parse.ly/lucene/ The book mentioned there is Lucene in Action. And then this YouTube presentation by a Lucene/Elasticsearch committer will give you a nice overview of some related algorithms— https://youtu.be/eQ-rXP-D80U
on “Ask HN: Books about full text search?” ↗