Comments on: Installing Edge Ferret/acts_as_ferret

By: Anthony Caliendo

Anthony Caliendo — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:36:16 +0000

Yes, you need to have an existing ferret index in order to use that rake task.
You can either create a custom rake task, or, as you did, hop into the console and manually invoke Foo.rebuild_index.

I would vote the custom rake task route, as a new person/new environment will need to do that as well.

Here is a snipet (replace Foo and Bar with your classes):
desc ‘create fresh ferret index’
task :ferret_build => :environment do
[Foo, Bar].each(&:rebuild_index)
end

Also, thanks for the github tip. I’ll update my post to use that as the URL.

By: Alderete

Alderete — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:10:54 +0000

OK, it looks like the problem is that the SVN repository is no longer being maintained for acts_as_ferret; the repository is now hosted at RubyForge, with a mirror on GitHub. The correct command to install the acts_as_ferret plug-in from the repository is thus:

script/plugin install git://github.com/jkraemer/acts_as_ferret.git

Once I did that and rebuilt my indexes, my searches now work. Note that I rebuilt my indexes manually, in script/console, using Model.rebuild_index, e.g., “Person.rebuild_index”. Now that it’s working, I’m too afraid to try the Rake task to do the rebuilding…

By: Alderete

Alderete — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:37:36 +0000

Hmmm, looking at the ferret:rebuild rake task, it appears you need to provide the name of the index(es) to rebuild in an INDEXES environment variable, ala:

INDEXES="person project publication skill" rake ferret:rebuild --trace

But this also errors out, just in a slightly different place:

$ INDEXES="development" rake ferret:rebuild --trace (in /Users/maalder/Code/Rails/thunderbook.maalder.dev) ** Invoke ferret:rebuild (first_time) ** Invoke environment (first_time) ** Execute environment ** Execute ferret:rebuild rake aborted! development /Users/maalder/Code/Rails/thunderbook.maalder.dev/vendor/plugins/acts_as_ferret/lib/acts_as_ferret.rb:264:in `get_index' /Users/maalder/Code/Rails/thunderbook.maalder.dev/vendor/plugins/acts_as_ferret/lib/acts_as_ferret.rb:385:in `rebuild_index' /Users/maalder/Code/Rails/thunderbook.maalder.dev/vendor/plugins/acts_as_ferret/tasks/ferret.rake:12 /Users/maalder/Code/Rails/thunderbook.maalder.dev/vendor/plugins/acts_as_ferret/tasks/ferret.rake:10:in `each' /Users/maalder/Code/Rails/thunderbook.maalder.dev/vendor/plugins/acts_as_ferret/tasks/ferret.rake:10 /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:617:in `call' [...]

Also, my former method of rebuilding my indexes, simply deleting them and restarting my application, and then running a search, is creating an “index” that looks nothing like the old version, with only two files per model, one of which is empty, and one of which is only a few lines long.

Maybe getting the latest ferret and acts_as_ferret from the trunk isn’t such a good idea, the currently checked in version is busted…?

By: Alderete

Alderete — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:19:15 +0000

I’m having some problems with this. Running the tests via “rake” seemed to compile everything, and ran the tests with 0 failures, 0 errors. Packaging also seemed to work fine, as did installation. I can see the new version of ferret in the output of “gem list”, and I was able to unpack it into vendor/gems.

But when I run “rake ferret:rebuild” to rebuild my indexes, I get errors:

$ rake ferret:rebuild --trace (in /Users/maalder/Code/Rails/thunderbook.maalder.dev) ** Invoke ferret:rebuild (first_time) ** Invoke environment (first_time) ** Execute environment ** Execute ferret:rebuild rake aborted! You have a nil object when you didn't expect it! You might have expected an instance of Array. The error occurred while evaluating nil.split /Users/maalder/Code/Rails/thunderbook.maalder.dev/vendor/plugins/acts_as_ferret/tasks/ferret.rake:9 /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:617:in `call' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:617:in `execute' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:612:in `each' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:612:in `execute' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:578:in `invoke_with_call_chain' /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/monitor.rb:242:in `synchronize' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:571:in `invoke_with_call_chain' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:564:in `invoke' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:2019:in `invoke_task' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:1997:in `top_level' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:1997:in `each' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:1997:in `top_level' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:2036:in `standard_exception_handling' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:1991:in `top_level' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:1970:in `run' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:2036:in `standard_exception_handling' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/lib/rake.rb:1967:in `run' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.3/bin/rake:31 /usr/bin/rake:19:in `load' /usr/bin/rake:19

I am completely baffled and obviously, without an index, I’m getting no search results at all. Any ideas?

By: kishore

kishore — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:46:11 +0000

is this stable