Sal
Peter Hoffmann Director Data Engineering at Blue Yonder. Python Developer, Conference Speaker, Mountaineer

How do I implement Search Functionality in a website?

This my Answer to the stackoverflow question: How do I implement Search Functionality in a website?:

It depends on how comprehensive your web site is and how much you want to do yourself.

If you are running a a small website without further possibilities to add a custom search, let google do the work (maybe add a sitemap) and use the google custom search.

If you run a medium site with an sql engine use the search features of your sql engine.

If you run some heavier software stack like J2EE or .Net use Lucene, a great, powerful search engine or its .Net clone lucene.Net

If you want to abstract your search from your application and be able to query it in a language neutral way with XML/HTTP and JSON APIs, have a look at solr. Solr runs lucene in the background, but adds a nice web interface to it.