GCA Website Development Request

The Ginger Loon · Post by **The Ginger Loon** » 06 July 06 1:02 am

Hi y'all,

I'd like to request a better / more advanced search capability for GCA. I'd like to see the ability to do a keyword search not just for cache names but also within the cache descriptions and the logs.

Searching for "bananas" for example would return something like;

4 caches found with "Bananas" in the title
<ul>
<li>He Likes Bananas. - GA5516</li>
<li>I Like Bananas - GA5514</li>
<li>You Like Bananas? - GA5515</li>
<li>You Think I'm Bananas, You Should See My Brother! - GA5517</li>
</ul>

6 caches found with "Bananas" in the description
<ul>
<li>Apples & Oranges - GCFRUT</li>
<li>He Likes Bananas. - GA5516</li>
<li>I Like Bananas - GA5514</li>
<li>You Like Bananas? - GA5515</li>
<li>You Think I'm Bananas, You Should See My Brother! - GA5517</li>
<li>St Elmos Fire - GCWH79</li>
</ul>

7 logs found containing "Bananas"
<ul>
<li>15/4/03 - Geomonkeys - Apples & Oranges - GCFRUT</li>
<li>16/8/04 - Team Chaos - Tim Tam & Freddo Frenzy - GCFULL</li>
<li>25/12/05 - Mind Socket - Apples & Oranges - GCFRUT</li>
<li>1/1/06 - ideology - He Likes Bananas. - GA5516</li>
<li>2/1/06 - Swampgecko - I Like Bananas - GA5514</li>
<li>2/1/06 - Team Chaos - I Like Bananas - GA5514</li>
<li>15/6/06 - Team Piggy - You Think I'm Bananas, You Should See My Brother! - GA5517</li>
<li>15/10/03 - Gulargonthorpe Inc. - St Elmos Fire - GCWH79</li>
</ul>

Is this possible (given the high cost of said bananas these days)?

L

N

The Garner Family · Post by **The Garner Family** » 06 July 06 2:40 pm

I think this would be good, especially if you could search using other search terms and not just the word "bananas".

Post by **caughtatwork** » 06 July 06 8:50 pm

I've run some quick and dirty tests against the database for the log search and the cache description search and I don't think we're going to be doing this just at the moment.

Searching for bananas across the logs takes around 11 seconds to return the first 50 rows. That's almost an eternity and as the database grows the search time will only extend further, grinding the system to a halt.

Running it across the long descriptions is going to take even longer.

There may be an opportunity to take this type of interrogation to a new level when (if) we change database languages but at the moment it's not realisitically viable.

Please add your suggestion to the wiki Developement List tro ensure we don't foget about it for the future.

http://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/Geoc ... pment_List

The Ginger Loon · Post by **The Ginger Loon** » 06 July 06 11:25 pm

I wanted to add it to the list initially but the list suggests posting it here first. I'll add it to the list now, though.

caughtatwork wrote:There may be an opportunity to take this type of interrogation to a new level when (if) we change database languages but at the moment

By this do you mean the migration from PostgreSQL to MySQL, or something else? If you mean Postgres -> MySQL, what is the timeframe for that. I see it's mentioned on the DevList...

Post by **caughtatwork** » 07 July 06 6:49 pm

The migration from Postgres to MySQL. I don't think we have a timeframe for that yet.

MySQL has a built in index function that allows fulltext indexing, whereas Postgres has similar functionlity only via an add-in.

There are other techincal means to achieve the same goal, but would require an arduous amount of effort that could probably be better spent caching.

Thanks for your understanding and patience.

The Ginger Loon · Post by **The Ginger Loon** » 07 July 06 10:38 pm

I'm hoping the migration will happen sooner rather than later. I have some PHP skills I'd like to put to use, but no *nix skills, so therefore it has been suggested I get a copy of WAMP5 to use as a development environment, which eliminates the *nix problem. But since the db in WAMP5 is MySQL and not Postgres, it'd be next to useless to install it if the site is running Postgres.

My personal website (http://teamchaos.geocaching.com.au) runs Postgres but I have been unsuccesful in finding a Postgres equivalent to WAMP. I guess it would be called WAPP?

Any suggestions?

Post by **caughtatwork** » 07 July 06 11:10 pm

PM sent.

Mind Socket · Post by **Mind Socket** » 09 August 06 5:46 pm

Although the live site is on Postgres, most (all?) of the GCA devs are developing on Mysql (I have a WAMP style environment under both win and lin) with a flick of a switch. So, you can probably start developing now, and even if the postgres cutover doesn't happen really soon (I don't think it will be all that long), you should _mostly_ be ok developing on mysql as long as you don't get too fancy with your queries.

- R