search functionality on multi-language django site

Question

I'm building a multi-language Django site, and I'm using django-transmeta for my model data translations. Now I'm wondering if there is a Django search app that works with multi-language models. I've played with Haystack and it works fine for single-language sites, but I can't get it to work with transmeta's metaclasses...

Does anybody have any experience with this? Any pointers would be appreciated!

cheers,

martin

Answer 1

This more of a starting point than a full solution, but I hope it help and that other users can improve this idea and reach a better solution.

Using Haystack to index a multilingual site (using django-transmeta or django-multilingual) you face two problems:

1. how to index the content for all the languages
2. how to search the query the correct index depending on the selected languages

1) Index the content for all the languages

Create a separate fields for each language in every SearchIndex model, using a common prefix and the language code:

text_en = indexes.CharField(model_attr='body_en', document=True) text_pt = indexes.CharField(model_attr='body_pt') 

If you want to index several fields you can obviously use a template. Only one of the indexes can have document=True.

If you need pre-rendered http://haystacksearch.org/docs/searchindex_api.html field for faster display, you should create one for each language (ie, rendered_en, rendered_pt)

2) Querying the correct index

The default haystack auto_query method is programmed to receive a "q" query parameter on the request and search the "content" index field - the one marked as document=True - in all the Index models. Only one of the indexes can have document=True and I believe we can only have a SearchIndex for each django Model.

The simplest solution, using the common search form, is to create a Multilingual SearchQuerySet that filters based, not on content, but on text_ (text being the prefix used on the Searchindex model above)

from django.conf import settings from django.utils.translation import get_language from haystack.query import SearchQuerySet, DEFAULT_OPERATOR  class MlSearchQuerySet(SearchQuerySet):     def filter(self, **kwargs):         """Narrows the search based on certain attributes and the default operator."""         if 'content' in kwargs:             kwd = kwargs.pop('content')             kwdkey = "text_%s" % str(get_language())             kwargs[kwdkey] = kwd         if getattr(settings, 'HAYSTACK_DEFAULT_OPERATOR', DEFAULT_OPERATOR) == 'OR':            return self.filter_or(**kwargs)         else:             return self.filter_and(**kwargs) 

and point your search URL to a view that uses this query set:

from haystack.forms import ModelSearchForm from haystack.views import SearchView  urlpatterns += patterns('haystack.views',     url(r'^search/$', SearchView(         searchqueryset=MlSearchQuerySet(),         form_class=ModelSearchForm     ), name='haystack_search_ml'), ) 

Now your search should be aware of the selected language.