Multi-Term Wildcard queries in Lucene?

Question

I'm using Zend_Search_Lucene, the PHP port of Java Lucene. I currently have some code that will build a search query based on an array of strings, finding results for which at least one index field matches each of the strings submitted. Simplified, it looks like this:

(Note: $words is an array constructed from user input.)

$query = new Zend_Search_Lucene_Search_Query_Boolean();
foreach ($words as $word) {
  $term1 = new Zend_Search_Lucene_Index_Term($word, $fieldname1);
  $term2 = new Zend_Search_Lucene_Index_term($word, $fieldname2);
  $multiq = new Zend_Search_Lucene_Search_Query_MultiTerm();
  $multiq->addTerm($term1);
  $multiq->addTerm($term2);
  $query->addSubquery($multiq, true);
}
$hits = $index->find($query);

What I would like to do is replace $word with ($word . '*') — appending an asterisk to the end of each word, turning it into a wildcard term.

But then, $multiq would have to be a Zend_Search_Lucene_Search_Query_Wildcard instead of a Zend_Search_Lucene_Search_Query_MultiTerm, and I don't think I would still be able to add multiple Index_Terms to each $multiq.

Is there a way to construct a query that's both a Wildcard and a MultiTerm?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Not in the way you're hoping to achieve it, unfortunately:

Lucene supports single and multiple character wildcard searches within single terms (but not within phrase queries).

and even if it were possible, would probably not be a good idea:

Wildcard, range and fuzzy search queries may match too many terms. It may cause incredible search performance downgrade.

I imagine the way to go if you insist on multiple wildcard terms, would be two execute two separate searches, one for each wildcarded term, and bundle the results together.