I am trying to implement synonym searching in the Examine search engine that comes with Umbraco 8 out of the box.
Does anyone have any experience with implementing synonym searching in Examine/Umbraco 8. The options that I have been considering after looking around are -
- A package that can be installed in Umbraco 8 that offers this extended functionality (if one exists).
- Implementing a custom index (currently just using the out of the box 'ExternalIndex') that somehow implements synonym searching in the analysis (via custom analyzer implementation etc - If that is even possible).
- Manually formatting multiple search terms by checking for synonyms in the string beforehand, running all searches and consolidating the results after (really a nasty, last resort option - you don't have to tell me how bad this is, I already know).
I have been trawling around the forums for a definitive answer on this and cannot really find one. Essentially I want to stick with the Examine engine for simplicity, however I am starting to think that the best way to achieve what I am after would be to move to a new engine completely (elastic search for example).
Many thanks in advance.
The Examine is based on something called the Lucene search index. Lucene is known to not really do synonyms I'm afraid (read why here and potential solution).
Your thinking is probably correct. Examine is good at what it does, if you want to use more advanced searching then you will be better off using a more advanced search provider. There are loads of options, Algolia is Saas and comes with a free plan depending on your usage. It's easy to install and you target data from the front-end.
YOu could also look into Azure Cognitive Search or Solr. These are probably harder to implement but will also do the job