Tag: search

I revisted my tagsearch implementation this evening and realized I could make it both much simpler and much more powerful. I now support queries with mixed and/or syntax. "and" has higher precedence - so:

http://www.timfanelli.com/tags/python/folksonomy+ruby/blosxonomy

Will return all posts the are tagged ( "python" and "folksonomy" ) or ( "ruby" and "blosxonomy" )

This is accomplished by taking the request string that matches /^\/tags/(.*)/ and splitting it first on +. I then take each element in the resulting array, split on / and find entries that match all the tags. The results are appended together to build the final response.

This is all accomplished in a few simple lines:

m = Regexp::compile( config['tags_path'] + "/(.*)", Regexp::IGNORECASE ).match( pathinfo )
if m
	ortags = m[1].split('+')		
	ortags.each { |andtags| app['entries'] |= fel.getEntriesWithAllTags( andtags.split('/') ) }
end

Where fel is my File Entry Locator. I envision this changing a little bit when I design the SQL Entry Locator, and supporting queries directly in the locator API.

Again, this feature will be released with Blosxonomy 0.6.

I enabled multi tag searching today in Blosxonomy. This is a feature that was already in place, but my URL processing didn't account for. Multi tag searching allows you to lookup entries that match any or all tags specified in the query string - for instance:

http://www.timfanelli.com/tags/svn/apple

Will lookup all entries that are tagged "svn" and "apple".

http://www.timfanelli.com/tags/svn+apple

Will lookup all entries that are tagged "svn" or "apple".

This opens up the possibility to do some cool things, such as showing a "related tag cloud" instead of the full tagcloud when you're searching on a tag. Clicking on a tag in the related tag cloud could append the new tag as an and or an or, allowing to your refine your results with a dynamic view of available relationships.

This feature will be relesed with blosxonomy 0.6.

I recently posted a theory that MSN Search Results were tainted in favor of sites that mention Microsoft or Microsoft technologies, because a search for my name yielded only one article on my site, which happened to mention Microsoft (specifically, it was things about microsoft that pissed me off).

(read more)

I've been doing a lot of restructuring on my site lately to help improve my google pagerank, completely ignoring the fact that there's other search engines out there. I decided to take a look around and see how I did in other searches.

I went to MSN's search.msn.com and queries "Tim Fanelli". Interestingly enough my Swag Roll is first, followed by only 2 links into my own site, one for my Microsoft category, and my Database category where I use the phrase "MS SQL Server".