Chinese fulltext search

Hi, I'm using this component on a site that use Traditional Chinese as the default language, and found that the search is not working as expected, always got empty result.

After some tracing and search, I think that's probably because the MySQL's fulltext indexing does not support for Chinese word breaking, and Chinese seldom have spaces or comma in sentences, causes that require a more precise keyword to search.

For example, "這是一個中文句子", probably expected can be searched by keywords like "中文", "句子", "這是", but I can only search it when I type "這是一個中文句子".

I've already searched for some posts in this forum, but haven't got anything helpful.

It's there any existing solutions? Or any future plans to do the work breaking in PHP before the search_index saved?

Thanks for help.

Try this:

1. Edit my.cnf or mysql.ini and set
ft_min_word_len=3

2. Restart MySql server

3. in phpmyadmin execute:
repair table jos_flexicontent_items_ext;
repair table jos_flexicontent_advsearch_index;

(replace jos_ with you Joomla DB-prefix)

4. Go to FLEXIcontent backend "Search Index" Tab and click to rebuild both "basic search index" and "advanced search index"

5. Go to FLEXIcontent category and search views to test

NOTE: you do not need to change minimum word length in advanced search plugin, this limits the user input (will not allow user to search e.g. with words smaller than 4 characters)

Please report back here with the results

Hi, thanks for such helpful step by step response, but sorry about that I don't have access to my.cnf or mysql.ini, I didn't hosting the server.

Is there any php-level solutions? Thanks.

Try contacting your host provider with this topic

(also, maybe first try it in a localhost installation)

Regards

Sorry, but I can't ask the host provider to do those changes, that's restricted.

Yes, of course I can try it in a local installation, but I still can't deploy it to our production environment.

Anyway, Thank you.

Actually this will not hinder server performance, so it is a pity that most providers do not allow a lower setting

Lowering ft_min_word_len to be 1 will have only a small performance effect, while doing searches with LIKE %word% in an non-indexable column of a big table will cause really big server load !!!

If it is important to use fulltext search, you can get a Virtual Private server for 25 $ per month, (of course first test solution in localhost)