summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/www/fts3.html
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to '')
-rw-r--r--www/fts3.html3286
1 files changed, 3286 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/www/fts3.html b/www/fts3.html
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bb180f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/www/fts3.html
@@ -0,0 +1,3286 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html><head>
+<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
+<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
+<link href="sqlite.css" rel="stylesheet">
+<title>SQLite FTS3 and FTS4 Extensions</title>
+<!-- path= -->
+</head>
+<body>
+<div class=nosearch>
+<a href="index.html">
+<img class="logo" src="images/sqlite370_banner.gif" alt="SQLite" border="0">
+</a>
+<div><!-- IE hack to prevent disappearing logo --></div>
+<div class="tagline desktoponly">
+Small. Fast. Reliable.<br>Choose any three.
+</div>
+<div class="menu mainmenu">
+<ul>
+<li><a href="index.html">Home</a>
+<li class='mobileonly'><a href="javascript:void(0)" onclick='toggle_div("submenu")'>Menu</a>
+<li class='wideonly'><a href='about.html'>About</a>
+<li class='desktoponly'><a href="docs.html">Documentation</a>
+<li class='desktoponly'><a href="download.html">Download</a>
+<li class='wideonly'><a href='copyright.html'>License</a>
+<li class='desktoponly'><a href="support.html">Support</a>
+<li class='desktoponly'><a href="prosupport.html">Purchase</a>
+<li class='search' id='search_menubutton'>
+<a href="javascript:void(0)" onclick='toggle_search()'>Search</a>
+</ul>
+</div>
+<div class="menu submenu" id="submenu">
+<ul>
+<li><a href='about.html'>About</a>
+<li><a href='docs.html'>Documentation</a>
+<li><a href='download.html'>Download</a>
+<li><a href='support.html'>Support</a>
+<li><a href='prosupport.html'>Purchase</a>
+</ul>
+</div>
+<div class="searchmenu" id="searchmenu">
+<form method="GET" action="search">
+<select name="s" id="searchtype">
+<option value="d">Search Documentation</option>
+<option value="c">Search Changelog</option>
+</select>
+<input type="text" name="q" id="searchbox" value="">
+<input type="submit" value="Go">
+</form>
+</div>
+</div>
+<script>
+function toggle_div(nm) {
+var w = document.getElementById(nm);
+if( w.style.display=="block" ){
+w.style.display = "none";
+}else{
+w.style.display = "block";
+}
+}
+function toggle_search() {
+var w = document.getElementById("searchmenu");
+if( w.style.display=="block" ){
+w.style.display = "none";
+} else {
+w.style.display = "block";
+setTimeout(function(){
+document.getElementById("searchbox").focus()
+}, 30);
+}
+}
+function div_off(nm){document.getElementById(nm).style.display="none";}
+window.onbeforeunload = function(e){div_off("submenu");}
+/* Disable the Search feature if we are not operating from CGI, since */
+/* Search is accomplished using CGI and will not work without it. */
+if( !location.origin || !location.origin.match || !location.origin.match(/http/) ){
+document.getElementById("search_menubutton").style.display = "none";
+}
+/* Used by the Hide/Show button beside syntax diagrams, to toggle the */
+function hideorshow(btn,obj){
+var x = document.getElementById(obj);
+var b = document.getElementById(btn);
+if( x.style.display!='none' ){
+x.style.display = 'none';
+b.innerHTML='show';
+}else{
+x.style.display = '';
+b.innerHTML='hide';
+}
+return false;
+}
+var antiRobot = 0;
+function antiRobotGo(){
+if( antiRobot!=3 ) return;
+antiRobot = 7;
+var j = document.getElementById("mtimelink");
+if(j && j.hasAttribute("data-href")) j.href=j.getAttribute("data-href");
+}
+function antiRobotDefense(){
+document.body.onmousedown=function(){
+antiRobot |= 2;
+antiRobotGo();
+document.body.onmousedown=null;
+}
+document.body.onmousemove=function(){
+antiRobot |= 2;
+antiRobotGo();
+document.body.onmousemove=null;
+}
+setTimeout(function(){
+antiRobot |= 1;
+antiRobotGo();
+}, 100)
+antiRobotGo();
+}
+antiRobotDefense();
+</script>
+<div class=fancy>
+<div class=nosearch>
+<div class="fancy_title">
+SQLite FTS3 and FTS4 Extensions
+</div>
+<div class="fancy_toc">
+<a onclick="toggle_toc()">
+<span class="fancy_toc_mark" id="toc_mk">&#x25ba;</span>
+Table Of Contents
+</a>
+<div id="toc_sub"><div class="fancy-toc1"><a href="#introduction_to_fts3_and_fts4">1. Introduction to FTS3 and FTS4</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#differences_between_fts3_and_fts4">1.1. Differences between FTS3 and FTS4</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#creating_and_destroying_fts_tables">1.2. Creating and Destroying FTS Tables</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#populating_fts_tables">1.3. Populating FTS Tables</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#simple_fts_queries">1.4. Simple FTS Queries</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#summary">1.5. Summary</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc1"><a href="#compiling_and_enabling_fts3_and_fts4">2. Compiling and Enabling FTS3 and FTS4</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc1"><a href="#full_text_index_queries">3. Full-text Index Queries</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#_set_operations_using_the_enhanced_query_syntax">3.1.
+Set Operations Using The Enhanced Query Syntax</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#set_operations_using_the_standard_query_syntax">3.2. Set Operations Using The Standard Query Syntax</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc1"><a href="#auxiliary_functions_snippet_offsets_and_matchinfo">4. Auxiliary Functions - Snippet, Offsets and Matchinfo</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#the_offsets_function">4.1. The Offsets Function</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#the_snippet_function">4.2. The Snippet Function</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#matchinfo">4.3. The Matchinfo Function</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc1"><a href="#fts4aux">5. Fts4aux - Direct Access to the Full-Text Index</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc1"><a href="#fts4_options">6. FTS4 Options</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#the_compress_and_uncompress_options">6.1. The compress= and uncompress= options</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#the_content_option_">6.2. The content= option </a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc3"><a href="#_contentless_fts4_tables_">6.2.1. Contentless FTS4 Tables </a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc3"><a href="#_external_content_fts4_tables_">6.2.2. External Content FTS4 Tables </a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#the_languageid_option">6.3. The languageid= option</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#the_matchinfo_option">6.4. The matchinfo= option</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#the_notindexed_option">6.5. The notindexed= option</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#the_prefix_option">6.6. The prefix= option</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc1"><a href="#commands">7. Special Commands For FTS3 and FTS4</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#optimize">7.1. The "optimize" command</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#rebuild">7.2. The "rebuild" command</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#integcheck">7.3. The "integrity-check" command</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#mergecmd">7.4. The "merge=X,Y" command</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#automerge"">7.5. The "automerge=N" command</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc1"><a href="#tokenizer">8. Tokenizers</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#custom_application_defined_tokenizers">8.1. Custom (Application Defined) Tokenizers</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#querying_tokenizers">8.2. Querying Tokenizers</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc1"><a href="#data_structures">9. Data Structures</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#shadow_tables">9.1. Shadow Tables</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#variable_length_integer_varint_format">9.2. Variable Length Integer (varint) Format</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#segment_b_tree_format">9.3. Segment B-Tree Format</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc3"><a href="#segment_b_tree_leaf_nodes">9.3.1. Segment B-Tree Leaf Nodes</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc3"><a href="#segment_b_tree_interior_nodes">9.3.2. Segment B-Tree Interior Nodes</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#doclist_format">9.4. Doclist Format</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc1"><a href="#limitations">10. Limitations</a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc2"><a href="#_utf_16_byte_order_mark_problem_">10.1. UTF-16 byte-order-mark problem </a></div>
+<div class="fancy-toc1"><a href="#appendix_a">
+Appendix A: Search Application Tips
+</a></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<script>
+function toggle_toc(){
+var sub = document.getElementById("toc_sub")
+var mk = document.getElementById("toc_mk")
+if( sub.style.display!="block" ){
+sub.style.display = "block";
+mk.innerHTML = "&#x25bc;";
+} else {
+sub.style.display = "none";
+mk.innerHTML = "&#x25ba;";
+}
+}
+</script>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h2 id="overview" style="margin-left:1.0em" notoc="1"> Overview</h2>
+
+<p>
+ FTS3 and FTS4 are SQLite virtual table modules that allows users to perform
+ full-text searches on a set of documents. The most common (and effective)
+ way to describe full-text searches is "what Google, Yahoo, and Bing do
+ with documents placed on the World Wide Web". Users input a term, or series
+ of terms, perhaps connected by a binary operator or grouped together into a
+ phrase, and the full-text query system finds the set of documents that best
+ matches those terms considering the operators and groupings the user has
+ specified. This article describes the deployment and usage of FTS3 and FTS4.
+
+</p><p>
+ FTS1 and FTS2 are obsolete full-text search modules for SQLite. There are known
+ issues with these older modules and their use should be avoided.
+ Portions of the original FTS3 code were contributed to the SQLite project
+ by Scott Hess of <a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a>. It is now
+ developed and maintained as part of SQLite.
+
+</p><h1 id="introduction_to_fts3_and_fts4"><span>1. </span>Introduction to FTS3 and FTS4</h1>
+
+<p>
+ The FTS3 and FTS4 extension modules allows users to create special tables with a
+ built-in full-text index (hereafter "FTS tables"). The full-text index
+ allows the user to efficiently query the database for all rows that contain
+ one or more words (hereafter "tokens"), even if the table
+ contains many large documents.
+
+</p><p>
+ For example, if each of the 517430 documents in the
+ "<a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~enron/">Enron E-Mail Dataset</a>"
+ is inserted into both an FTS table and an ordinary SQLite table
+ created using the following SQL script:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE enrondata1 USING fts3(content TEXT); /* FTS3 table */
+CREATE TABLE enrondata2(content TEXT); /* Ordinary table */
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ Then either of the two queries below may be executed to find the number of
+ documents in the database that contain the word "linux" (351). Using one
+ desktop PC hardware configuration, the query on the FTS3 table returns in
+ approximately 0.03 seconds, versus 22.5 for querying the ordinary table.
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>SELECT count(*) FROM enrondata1 WHERE content MATCH 'linux'; /* 0.03 seconds */
+SELECT count(*) FROM enrondata2 WHERE content LIKE '%linux%'; /* 22.5 seconds */
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ Of course, the two queries above are not entirely equivalent. For example
+ the LIKE query matches rows that contain terms such as "linuxophobe"
+ or "EnterpriseLinux" (as it happens, the Enron E-Mail Dataset does not
+ actually contain any such terms), whereas the MATCH query on the FTS3 table
+ selects only those rows that contain "linux" as a discrete token. Both
+ searches are case-insensitive. The FTS3 table consumes around 2006 MB on
+ disk compared to just 1453 MB for the ordinary table. Using the same
+ hardware configuration used to perform the SELECT queries above, the FTS3
+ table took just under 31 minutes to populate, versus 25 for the ordinary
+ table.
+
+</p><h2 id="differences_between_fts3_and_fts4"><span>1.1. </span>Differences between FTS3 and FTS4</h2>
+<a name="fts4"></a>
+
+
+<p>
+ FTS3 and FTS4 are nearly identical. They share most of their code in common,
+ and their interfaces are the same. The differences are:
+
+</p><ul>
+ <li> <p>FTS4 contains query performance optimizations that may significantly
+ improve the performance of full-text queries that contain terms that are
+ very common (present in a large percentage of table rows).
+
+ </p></li><li> <p>FTS4 supports some additional options that may used with the <a href="fts3.html#matchinfo">matchinfo()</a>
+ function.
+
+ </p></li><li> <p>Because it stores extra information on disk in two new
+ <a href="fts3.html#*shadowtab">shadow tables</a> in order to support the performance
+ optimizations and extra matchinfo() options, FTS4 tables may consume more
+ disk space than the equivalent table created using FTS3. Usually the overhead
+ is 1-2% or less, but may be as high as 10% if the documents stored in the
+ FTS table are very small. The overhead may be reduced by specifying the
+ directive <a href="fts3.html#fts4matchinfo">"matchinfo=fts3"</a> as part of the FTS4 table
+ declaration, but this comes at the expense of sacrificing some of the
+ extra supported matchinfo() options.
+
+ </p></li><li> <p>FTS4 provides hooks (the compress and uncompress
+ <a href="fts3.html#fts4_options">options</a>) allowing data to be stored in a compressed
+ form, reducing disk usage and IO.
+</p></li></ul>
+
+<p>
+ FTS4 is an enhancement to FTS3.
+ FTS3 has been available since SQLite <a href="releaselog/3_5_0.html">version 3.5.0</a> (2007-09-04)
+ The enhancements for FTS4 were added with SQLite <a href="releaselog/3_7_4.html">version 3.7.4</a>
+ (2010-12-07).
+
+</p><p>
+ Which module, FTS3 or FTS4, should you use in your application? FTS4 is
+ sometimes significantly faster than FTS3, even orders of magnitude faster
+ depending on the query, though in the common case the performance of the two
+ modules is similar. FTS4 also offers the enhanced <a href="fts3.html#matchinfo">matchinfo()</a> outputs which
+ can be useful in ranking the results of a <a href="fts3.html#full_text_index_queries">MATCH</a> operation. On the
+ other hand, in the absence of a <a href="fts3.html#fts4matchinfo">matchinfo=fts3</a> directive FTS4 requires a little
+ more disk space than FTS3, though only a percent of two in most cases.
+
+</p><p>
+ For newer applications, FTS4 is recommended; though if compatibility with older
+ versions of SQLite is important, then FTS3 will usually serve just as well.
+
+</p><h2 id="creating_and_destroying_fts_tables"><span>1.2. </span>Creating and Destroying FTS Tables</h2>
+
+<p>
+ Like other virtual table types, new FTS tables are created using a
+ <a href="lang_createvtab.html">CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE</a> statement. The module name, which follows
+ the USING keyword, is either "fts3" or "fts4". The virtual table module arguments may
+ be left empty, in which case an FTS table with a single user-defined
+ column named "content" is created. Alternatively, the module arguments
+ may be passed a list of comma separated column names.
+
+</p><p>
+ If column names are explicitly provided for the FTS table as part of
+ the CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE statement, then a datatype name may be optionally
+ specified for each column. This is pure syntactic sugar, the
+ supplied typenames are not used by FTS or the SQLite core for any
+ purpose. The same applies to any constraints specified along with an
+ FTS column name - they are parsed but not used or recorded by the system
+ in any way.
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Create an FTS table named "data" with one column - "content":</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE data USING fts3();
+
+<i>-- Create an FTS table named "pages" with three columns:</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE pages USING fts4(title, keywords, body);
+
+<i>-- Create an FTS table named "mail" with two columns. Datatypes
+-- and column constraints are specified along with each column. These
+-- are completely ignored by FTS and SQLite. </i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE mail USING fts3(
+ subject VARCHAR(256) NOT NULL,
+ body TEXT CHECK(length(body)&lt;10240)
+);
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ As well as a list of columns, the module arguments passed to a CREATE
+ VIRTUAL TABLE statement used to create an FTS table may be used to specify
+ a <a href="fts3.html#tokenizer">tokenizer</a>. This is done by specifying a string of the form
+ "tokenize=&lt;tokenizer name&gt; &lt;tokenizer args&gt;" in place of a column
+ name, where &lt;tokenizer name&gt; is the name of the tokenizer to use and
+ &lt;tokenizer args&gt; is an optional list of whitespace separated qualifiers
+ to pass to the tokenizer implementation. A tokenizer specification may be
+ placed anywhere in the column list, but at most one tokenizer declaration is
+ allowed for each CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE statement. <a href="fts3.html#tokenizer">See below</a> for a
+ detailed description of using (and, if necessary, implementing) a tokenizer.
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Create an FTS table named "papers" with two columns that uses</i>
+<i>-- the tokenizer "porter".</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts3(author, document, tokenize=porter);
+
+<i>-- Create an FTS table with a single column - "content" - that uses</i>
+<i>-- the "simple" tokenizer.</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE data USING fts4(tokenize=simple);
+
+<i>-- Create an FTS table with two columns that uses the "icu" tokenizer.</i>
+<i>-- The qualifier "en_AU" is passed to the tokenizer implementation</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE names USING fts3(a, b, tokenize=icu en_AU);
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ FTS tables may be dropped from the database using an ordinary <a href="lang_droptable.html">DROP TABLE</a>
+ statement. For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Create, then immediately drop, an FTS4 table.</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE data USING fts4();
+DROP TABLE data;
+</pre></div>
+
+<h2 id="populating_fts_tables"><span>1.3. </span>Populating FTS Tables</h2>
+
+ <p>
+ FTS tables are populated using <a href="lang_insert.html">INSERT</a>, <a href="lang_update.html">UPDATE</a> and <a href="lang_delete.html">DELETE</a>
+ statements in the same way as ordinary SQLite tables are.
+
+ </p><p>
+ As well as the columns named by the user (or the "content" column if no
+ module arguments were specified as part of the <a href="lang_createvtab.html">CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE</a>
+ statement), each FTS table has a "rowid" column. The rowid of an FTS
+ table behaves in the same way as the rowid column of an ordinary SQLite
+ table, except that the values stored in the rowid column of an FTS table
+ remain unchanged if the database is rebuilt using the <a href="lang_vacuum.html">VACUUM</a> command.
+ For FTS tables, "docid" is allowed as an alias along with the usual "rowid",
+ "oid" and "_oid_" identifiers. Attempting to insert or update a row with a
+ docid value that already exists in the table is an error, just as it would
+ be with an ordinary SQLite table.
+
+ </p><p>
+ There is one other subtle difference between "docid" and the normal SQLite
+ aliases for the rowid column. Normally, if an INSERT or UPDATE statement
+ assigns discrete values to two or more aliases of the rowid column, SQLite
+ writes the rightmost of such values specified in the INSERT or UPDATE
+ statement to the database. However, assigning a non-NULL value to both
+ the "docid" and one or more of the SQLite rowid aliases when inserting or
+ updating an FTS table is considered an error. See below for an example.
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Create an FTS table</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE pages USING fts4(title, body);
+
+<i>-- Insert a row with a specific docid value.</i>
+INSERT INTO pages(docid, title, body) VALUES(53, 'Home Page', 'SQLite is a software...');
+
+<i>-- Insert a row and allow FTS to assign a docid value using the same algorithm as</i>
+<i>-- SQLite uses for ordinary tables. In this case the new docid will be 54,</i>
+<i>-- one greater than the largest docid currently present in the table.</i>
+INSERT INTO pages(title, body) VALUES('Download', 'All SQLite source code...');
+
+<i>-- Change the title of the row just inserted.</i>
+UPDATE pages SET title = 'Download SQLite' WHERE rowid = 54;
+
+<i>-- Delete the entire table contents.</i>
+DELETE FROM pages;
+
+<i>-- The following is an error. It is not possible to assign non-NULL values to both</i>
+<i>-- the rowid and docid columns of an FTS table.</i>
+INSERT INTO pages(rowid, docid, title, body) VALUES(1, 2, 'A title', 'A document body');
+</pre></div>
+
+ <p>
+ To support full-text queries, FTS maintains an inverted index that maps
+ from each unique term or word that appears in the dataset to the locations
+ in which it appears within the table contents. For the curious, a
+ complete description of the <a href="fts3.html#data_structures">data structure</a> used to store
+ this index within the database file appears below. A feature of
+ this data structure is that at any time the database may contain not
+ one index b-tree, but several different b-trees that are incrementally
+ merged as rows are inserted, updated and deleted. This technique improves
+ performance when writing to an FTS table, but causes some overhead for
+ full-text queries that use the index. Evaluating the special <a href="fts3.html#*fts4optcmd">"optimize" command</a>,
+ an SQL statement of the
+ form "INSERT INTO &lt;fts-table&gt;(&lt;fts-table&gt;) VALUES('optimize')",
+ causes FTS to merge all existing index b-trees into a single large
+ b-tree containing the entire index. This can be an expensive operation,
+ but may speed up future queries.
+
+ </p><p>
+ For example, to optimize the full-text index for an FTS table named
+ "docs":
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Optimize the internal structure of FTS table "docs".</i>
+INSERT INTO docs(docs) VALUES('optimize');
+</pre></div>
+
+ <p>
+ The statement above may appear syntactically incorrect to some. Refer to
+ the section describing the <a href="fts3.html#simple_fts_queries">simple fts queries</a> for an explanation.
+
+ </p><p>
+ There is another, deprecated, method for invoking the optimize
+ operation using a SELECT statement. New code should use statements
+ similar to the INSERT above to optimize FTS structures.
+
+</p><a name="simple_fts_queries"></a>
+<h2 tags="simple fts queries" id="simple_fts_queries"><span>1.4. </span>Simple FTS Queries</h2>
+
+<p>
+ As for all other SQLite tables, virtual or otherwise, data is retrieved
+ from FTS tables using a <a href="lang_select.html">SELECT</a> statement.
+
+</p><p>
+ FTS tables can be queried efficiently using SELECT statements of two
+ different forms:
+
+</p><ul>
+ <li><p>
+ <b>Query by rowid</b>. If the WHERE clause of the SELECT statement
+ contains a sub-clause of the form "rowid = ?", where ? is an SQL expression,
+ FTS is able to retrieve the requested row directly using the equivalent
+ of an SQLite <a href="lang_createtable.html#rowid">INTEGER PRIMARY KEY</a> index.
+
+ </p></li><li><p>
+ <b>Full-text query</b>. If the WHERE clause of the SELECT statement contains
+ a sub-clause of the form "&lt;column&gt; MATCH ?", FTS is able to use
+ the built-in full-text index to restrict the search to those documents
+ that match the full-text query string specified as the right-hand operand
+ of the MATCH clause.
+</p></li></ul>
+
+<p>
+ If neither of these two query strategies can be used, all
+ queries on FTS tables are implemented using a linear scan of the entire
+ table. If the table contains large amounts of data, this may be an
+ impractical approach (the first example on this page shows that a linear
+ scan of 1.5 GB of data takes around 30 seconds using a modern PC).
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- The examples in this block assume the following FTS table:</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE mail USING fts3(subject, body);
+
+SELECT * FROM mail WHERE rowid = 15; <i>-- Fast. Rowid lookup.</i>
+SELECT * FROM mail WHERE body MATCH 'sqlite'; <i>-- Fast. Full-text query.</i>
+SELECT * FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH 'search'; <i>-- Fast. Full-text query.</i>
+SELECT * FROM mail WHERE rowid BETWEEN 15 AND 20; <i>-- Fast. Rowid lookup.</i>
+SELECT * FROM mail WHERE subject = 'database'; <i>-- Slow. Linear scan.</i>
+SELECT * FROM mail WHERE subject MATCH 'database'; <i>-- Fast. Full-text query.</i>
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ In all of the full-text queries above, the right-hand operand of the MATCH
+ operator is a string consisting of a single term. In this case, the MATCH
+ expression evaluates to true for all documents that contain one or more
+ instances of the specified word ("sqlite", "search" or "database", depending
+ on which example you look at). Specifying a single term as the right-hand
+ operand of the MATCH operator results in the simplest and most common type
+ of full-text query possible. However more complicated queries are possible,
+ including phrase searches, term-prefix searches and searches for documents
+ containing combinations of terms occurring within a defined proximity of each
+ other. The various ways in which the full-text index may be queried are
+ <a href="fts3.html#full_text_index_queries">described below</a>.
+
+</p><p>
+ Normally, full-text queries are case-insensitive. However, this
+ is dependent on the specific <a href="fts3.html#tokenizer">tokenizer</a> used by the FTS table
+ being queried. Refer to the section on <a href="fts3.html#tokenizer">tokenizers</a> for details.
+
+</p><p>
+ The paragraph above notes that a MATCH operator with a simple term as the
+ right-hand operand evaluates to true for all documents that contain the
+ specified term. In this context, the "document" may refer to either the
+ data stored in a single column of a row of an FTS table, or to the contents
+ of all columns in a single row, depending on the identifier used as the
+ left-hand operand to the MATCH operator. If the identifier specified as
+ the left-hand operand of the MATCH operator is an FTS table column name,
+ then the document that the search term must be contained in is the value
+ stored in the specified column. However, if the identifier is the name
+ of the FTS <i>table</i> itself, then the MATCH operator evaluates to true
+ for each row of the FTS table for which any column contains the search
+ term. The following example demonstrates this:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Example schema</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE mail USING fts3(subject, body);
+
+<i>-- Example table population</i>
+INSERT INTO mail(docid, subject, body) VALUES(1, 'software feedback', 'found it too slow');
+INSERT INTO mail(docid, subject, body) VALUES(2, 'software feedback', 'no feedback');
+INSERT INTO mail(docid, subject, body) VALUES(3, 'slow lunch order', 'was a software problem');
+
+<i>-- Example queries</i>
+SELECT * FROM mail WHERE subject MATCH 'software'; <i>-- Selects rows 1 and 2</i>
+SELECT * FROM mail WHERE body MATCH 'feedback'; <i>-- Selects row 2</i>
+SELECT * FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH 'software'; <i>-- Selects rows 1, 2 and 3</i>
+SELECT * FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH 'slow'; <i>-- Selects rows 1 and 3</i>
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ At first glance, the final two full-text queries in the example above seem
+ to be syntactically incorrect, as there is a table name ("mail") used as
+ an SQL expression. The reason this is acceptable is that each FTS table
+ actually has a <a href="c3ref/declare_vtab.html">HIDDEN</a> column with the same name
+ as the table itself (in this case, "mail"). The value stored in this
+ column is not meaningful to the application, but can be used as the
+ left-hand operand to a MATCH operator. This special column may also be
+ passed as an argument to the <a href="fts3.html#snippet">FTS auxiliary functions</a>.
+
+</p><p>
+ The following example illustrates the above. The expressions "docs",
+ "docs.docs" and "main.docs.docs" all refer to column "docs". However, the
+ expression "main.docs" does not refer to any column. It could be used to
+ refer to a table, but a table name is not allowed in the context in which
+ it is used below.
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Example schema</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE docs USING fts4(content);
+
+<i>-- Example queries</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite'; <i>-- OK.</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs.docs MATCH 'sqlite'; <i>-- OK.</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE main.docs.docs MATCH 'sqlite'; <i>-- OK.</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE main.docs MATCH 'sqlite'; <i>-- Error.</i>
+</pre></div>
+
+<h2 id="summary"><span>1.5. </span>Summary</h2>
+
+<p>
+ From the users point of view, FTS tables are similar to ordinary SQLite
+ tables in many ways. Data may be added to, modified within and removed
+ from FTS tables using the INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE commands just as
+ it may be with ordinary tables. Similarly, the SELECT command may be used
+ to query data. The following list summarizes the differences between FTS
+ and ordinary tables:
+
+</p><ol>
+ <li><p>
+ As with all virtual table types, it is not possible to create indices or
+ triggers attached to FTS tables. Nor is it possible to use the ALTER TABLE
+ command to add extra columns to FTS tables (although it is possible to use
+ ALTER TABLE to rename an FTS table).
+
+ </p></li><li><p>
+ Data-types specified as part of the "CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE" statement
+ used to create an FTS table are ignored completely. Instead of the
+ normal rules for applying type <a href="datatype3.html#affinity">affinity</a> to inserted values, all
+ values inserted into FTS table columns (except the special rowid
+ column) are converted to type TEXT before being stored.
+
+ </p></li><li><p>
+ FTS tables permit the special alias "docid" to be used to refer to the
+ rowid column supported by all <a href="vtab.html">virtual tables</a>.
+
+ </p></li><li><p>
+ The <a href="fts3.html#full_text_index_queries">FTS MATCH</a> operator is supported for queries based on the built-in
+ full-text index.
+
+ </p></li><li><p>
+ The <a href="fts3.html#snippet">FTS auxiliary functions</a>, <a href="fts3.html#snippet">snippet()</a>, <a href="fts3.html#offsets">offsets()</a>, and <a href="fts3.html#matchinfo">matchinfo()</a> are
+ available to support full-text queries.
+
+ </p></li><li><p>
+ <a name="hiddencol"></a>
+
+ Every FTS table has a <a href="vtab.html#hiddencol">hidden column</a> with the
+ same name as the table itself. The value contained in each row for the
+ hidden column is a blob that is only useful as the left operand of a
+ <a href="fts3.html#full_text_index_queries">MATCH</a> operator, or as the left-most argument to one
+ of the <a href="fts3.html#snippet">FTS auxiliary functions</a>.
+
+
+</p></li></ol>
+
+
+<a name="compiling_and_enabling_fts3_and_fts4"></a>
+<h1 tags="compile fts" id="compiling_and_enabling_fts3_and_fts4"><span>2. </span>Compiling and Enabling FTS3 and FTS4</h1>
+
+<p>
+ Although FTS3 and FTS4 are included with the SQLite core source code, they are not
+ enabled by default. To build SQLite with FTS functionality enabled, define
+ the preprocessor macro <a href="compile.html#enable_fts3">SQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3</a> when compiling. New applications
+ should also define the <a href="compile.html#enable_fts3_parenthesis">SQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3_PARENTHESIS</a> macro to enable the
+ <a href="fts3.html#_set_operations_using_the_enhanced_query_syntax">enhanced query syntax</a> (see below). Usually, this is done by adding the
+ following two switches to the compiler command line:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>-DSQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3
+-DSQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3_PARENTHESIS
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ Note that enabling FTS3 also makes FTS4 available. There is not a separate
+ SQLITE_ENABLE_FTS4 compile-time option. A build of SQLite either supports
+ both FTS3 and FTS4 or it supports neither.
+
+</p><p>
+ If using the amalgamation autoconf based build system, setting the CPPFLAGS
+ environment variable while running the 'configure' script is an easy
+ way to set these macros. For example, the following command:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>CPPFLAGS="-DSQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3 -DSQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3_PARENTHESIS" ./configure &lt;configure options&gt;
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ where <i>&lt;configure options&gt;</i> are those options normally passed to
+ the configure script, if any.
+
+</p><p>
+ Because FTS3 and FTS4 are virtual tables, The <a href="compile.html#enable_fts3">SQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3</a> compile-time option
+ is incompatible with the <a href="compile.html#omit_virtualtable">SQLITE_OMIT_VIRTUALTABLE</a> option.
+
+</p><p>
+ If a build of SQLite does not include the FTS modules, then any attempt to prepare an
+ SQL statement to create an FTS3 or FTS4 table or to drop or access an existing
+ FTS table in any way will fail. The error message returned will be similar
+ to "no such module: ftsN" (where N is either 3 or 4).
+
+</p><p>
+ If the C version of the <a href="http://site.icu-project.org/">ICU library</a>
+ is available, then FTS may also be compiled with the SQLITE_ENABLE_ICU
+ pre-processor macro defined. Compiling with this macro enables an FTS
+ <a href="fts3.html#tokenizer">tokenizer</a> that uses the ICU library to split a document into terms
+ (words) using the conventions for a specified language and locale.
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>-DSQLITE_ENABLE_ICU
+</pre></div>
+
+
+<a name="full_text_index_queries"></a>
+<h1 tags="FTS MATCH" id="full_text_index_queries"><span>3. </span>Full-text Index Queries</h1>
+
+<p>
+ The most useful thing about FTS tables is the queries that may be
+ performed using the built-in full-text index. Full-text queries are
+ performed by specifying a clause of the form
+ "&lt;column&gt; MATCH &lt;full-text query expression&gt;" as part of the WHERE
+ clause of a SELECT statement that reads data from an FTS table.
+ <a href="fts3.html#simple_fts_queries">Simple FTS queries</a> that return all documents that
+ contain a given term are described above. In that discussion the right-hand
+ operand of the MATCH operator was assumed to be a string consisting of a
+ single term. This section describes the more complex query types supported
+ by FTS tables, and how they may be utilized by specifying a more
+ complex query expression as the right-hand operand of a MATCH operator.
+
+</p><p>
+ FTS tables support three basic query types:
+
+</p><ul>
+ <a name="termprefix"></a>
+
+ <li><p><b>Token or token prefix queries</b>.
+ An FTS table may be queried for all documents that contain a specified
+ term (the <a href="fts3.html#simple_fts_queries">simple case</a> described above), or for
+ all documents that contain a term with a specified prefix. As we have
+ seen, the query expression for a specific term is simply the term itself.
+ The query expression used to search for a term prefix is the prefix
+ itself with a '*' character appended to it. For example:
+</p></li></ul>
+
+<div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Virtual table declaration</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE docs USING fts3(title, body);
+
+<i>-- Query for all documents containing the term "linux":</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'linux';
+
+<i>-- Query for all documents containing a term with the prefix "lin". This will match</i>
+<i>-- all documents that contain "linux", but also those that contain terms "linear",</i>
+<i>--"linker", "linguistic" and so on.</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'lin*';
+</pre></div>
+
+<ul>
+ <li style="list-style:none"><p>
+ Normally, a token or token prefix query is matched against the FTS table
+ column specified as the left-hand side of the MATCH operator. Or, if the
+ special column with the same name as the FTS table itself is specified,
+ against all columns. This may be overridden by specifying a column-name
+ followed by a ":" character before a basic term query. There may be space
+ between the ":" and the term to query for, but not between the column-name
+ and the ":" character. For example:
+</p></li></ul>
+
+<div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Query the database for documents for which the term "linux" appears in</i>
+<i>-- the document title, and the term "problems" appears in either the title</i>
+<i>-- or body of the document.</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'title:linux problems';
+
+<i>-- Query the database for documents for which the term "linux" appears in</i>
+<i>-- the document title, and the term "driver" appears in the body of the document</i>
+<i>-- ("driver" may also appear in the title, but this alone will not satisfy the</i>
+<i>-- query criteria).</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE body MATCH 'title:linux driver';
+</pre></div>
+
+<ul>
+ <li style="list-style:none"><p>
+ If the FTS table is an FTS4 table (not FTS3), a token may also be prefixed
+ with a "&#94;" character. In this case, in order to match the token must
+ appear as the very first token in any column of the matching row. Examples:
+</p></li></ul>
+
+<div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- All documents for which "linux" is the first token of at least one</i>
+<i>-- column.</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH '&#94;linux';
+
+<i>-- All documents for which the first token in column "title" begins with "lin".</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE body MATCH 'title: &#94;lin*';
+</pre></div>
+
+<a name="phrase"></a>
+
+<ul>
+ <li><p><b>Phrase queries</b>.
+ A phrase query is a query that retrieves all documents that contain a
+ nominated set of terms or term prefixes in a specified order with no
+ intervening tokens. Phrase queries are specified by enclosing a space
+ separated sequence of terms or term prefixes in double quotes (").
+ For example:
+</p></li></ul>
+
+<div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Query for all documents that contain the phrase "linux applications".</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH '"linux applications"';
+
+<i>-- Query for all documents that contain a phrase that matches "lin* app*". As well as</i>
+<i>-- "linux applications", this will match common phrases such as "linoleum appliances"</i>
+<i>-- or "link apprentice".</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH '"lin* app*"';
+</pre></div>
+
+<a name="near"></a>
+
+<ul>
+ <li><p><b>NEAR queries</b>.
+ A NEAR query is a query that returns documents that contain a two or
+ more nominated terms or phrases within a specified proximity of each
+ other (by default with 10 or less intervening terms). A NEAR query is
+ specified by putting the keyword "NEAR" between two phrase, token or
+ token prefix queries. To specify a proximity other than the default,
+ an operator of the form "NEAR/<i>&lt;N&gt;</i>" may be used, where
+ <i>&lt;N&gt;</i> is the maximum number of intervening terms allowed.
+ For example:
+</p></li></ul>
+
+<div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Virtual table declaration.</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE docs USING fts4();
+
+<i>-- Virtual table data.</i>
+INSERT INTO docs VALUES('SQLite is an ACID compliant embedded relational database management system');
+
+<i>-- Search for a document that contains the terms "sqlite" and "database" with</i>
+<i>-- not more than 10 intervening terms. This matches the only document in</i>
+<i>-- table docs (since there are only six terms between "SQLite" and "database"</i>
+<i>-- in the document)</i>.
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite NEAR database';
+
+<i>-- Search for a document that contains the terms "sqlite" and "database" with</i>
+<i>-- not more than 6 intervening terms. This also matches the only document in</i>
+<i>-- table docs. Note that the order in which the terms appear in the document</i>
+<i>-- does not have to be the same as the order in which they appear in the query.</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'database NEAR/6 sqlite';
+
+<i>-- Search for a document that contains the terms "sqlite" and "database" with</i>
+<i>-- not more than 5 intervening terms. This query matches no documents.</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'database NEAR/5 sqlite';
+
+<i>-- Search for a document that contains the phrase "ACID compliant" and the term</i>
+<i>-- "database" with not more than 2 terms separating the two. This matches the</i>
+<i>-- document stored in table docs.</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'database NEAR/2 "ACID compliant"';
+
+<i>-- Search for a document that contains the phrase "ACID compliant" and the term</i>
+<i>-- "sqlite" with not more than 2 terms separating the two. This also matches</i>
+<i>-- the only document stored in table docs.</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH '"ACID compliant" NEAR/2 sqlite';
+</pre></div>
+
+<ul>
+ <li style="list-style: none"><p>
+ More than one NEAR operator may appear in a single query. In this case each
+ pair of terms or phrases separated by a NEAR operator must appear within the
+ specified proximity of each other in the document. Using the same table and
+ data as in the block of examples above:
+</p></li></ul>
+
+<div class="codeblock"><pre>
+<i>-- The following query selects documents that contains an instance of the term </i>
+<i>-- "sqlite" separated by two or fewer terms from an instance of the term "acid",</i>
+<i>-- which is in turn separated by two or fewer terms from an instance of the term</i>
+<i>-- "relational".</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite NEAR/2 acid NEAR/2 relational';
+
+<i>-- This query matches no documents. There is an instance of the term "sqlite" with</i>
+<i>-- sufficient proximity to an instance of "acid" but it is not sufficiently close</i>
+<i>-- to an instance of the term "relational".</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'acid NEAR/2 sqlite NEAR/2 relational';
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ Phrase and NEAR queries may not span multiple columns within a row.
+
+</p><p>
+ The three basic query types described above may be used to query the full-text
+ index for the set of documents that match the specified criteria. Using the
+ FTS query expression language it is possible to perform various set
+ operations on the results of basic queries. There are currently three
+ supported operations:
+
+</p><ul>
+ <li> The AND operator determines the <b>intersection</b> of two sets of documents.
+
+ </li><li> The OR operator calculates the <b>union</b> of two sets of documents.
+
+ </li><li> The NOT operator (or, if using the standard syntax, a unary "-" operator)
+ may be used to compute the <b>relative complement</b> of one set of
+ documents with respect to another.
+</li></ul>
+
+<p>
+ The FTS modules may be compiled to use one of two slightly different versions
+ of the full-text query syntax, the "standard" query syntax and the "enhanced"
+ query syntax. The basic term, term-prefix, phrase and NEAR queries described
+ above are the same in both versions of the syntax. The way in which set
+ operations are specified is slightly different. The following two sub-sections
+ describe the part of the two query syntaxes that pertains to set operations.
+ Refer to the description of how to <a href="fts3.html#compiling_and_enabling_fts3_and_fts4">compile fts</a> for compilation notes.
+
+</p><a name="_set_operations_using_the_enhanced_query_syntax"></a>
+<h2 tags="enhanced query syntax" id="_set_operations_using_the_enhanced_query_syntax"><span>3.1. </span>
+ Set Operations Using The Enhanced Query Syntax</h2>
+
+<p>
+ The enhanced query syntax supports the AND, OR and NOT binary set operators.
+ Each of the two operands to an operator may be a basic FTS query, or the
+ result of another AND, OR or NOT set operation. Operators must be entered
+ using capital letters. Otherwise, they are interpreted as basic term queries
+ instead of set operators.
+
+</p><p>
+ The AND operator may be implicitly specified. If two basic queries appear
+ with no operator separating them in an FTS query string, the results are
+ the same as if the two basic queries were separated by an AND operator.
+ For example, the query expression "implicit operator" is a more succinct
+ version of "implicit AND operator".
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Virtual table declaration</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE docs USING fts3();
+
+<i>-- Virtual table data</i>
+INSERT INTO docs(docid, content) VALUES(1, 'a database is a software system');
+INSERT INTO docs(docid, content) VALUES(2, 'sqlite is a software system');
+INSERT INTO docs(docid, content) VALUES(3, 'sqlite is a database');
+
+<i>-- Return the set of documents that contain the term "sqlite", and the</i>
+<i>-- term "database". This query will return the document with docid 3 only.</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite AND database';
+
+<i>-- Again, return the set of documents that contain both "sqlite" and</i>
+<i>-- "database". This time, use an implicit AND operator. Again, document</i>
+<i>-- 3 is the only document matched by this query. </i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'database sqlite';
+
+<i>-- Query for the set of documents that contains either "sqlite" or "database".</i>
+<i>-- All three documents in the database are matched by this query.</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite OR database';
+
+<i>-- Query for all documents that contain the term "database", but do not contain</i>
+<i>-- the term "sqlite". Document 1 is the only document that matches this criteria.</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'database NOT sqlite';
+
+<i>-- The following query matches no documents. Because "and" is in lowercase letters,</i>
+<i>-- it is interpreted as a basic term query instead of an operator. Operators must</i>
+<i>-- be specified using capital letters. In practice, this query will match any documents</i>
+<i>-- that contain each of the three terms "database", "and" and "sqlite" at least once.</i>
+<i>-- No documents in the example data above match this criteria.</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'database and sqlite';
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ The examples above all use basic full-text term queries as both operands of
+ the set operations demonstrated. Phrase and NEAR queries may also be used,
+ as may the results of other set operations. When more than one set operation
+ is present in an FTS query, the precedence of operators is as follows:
+
+</p><table striped="1" style="margin:1em auto; width:80%; border-spacing:0">
+ <tr style="text-align:left"><th>Operator</th><th>Enhanced Query Syntax Precedence
+ </th></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>NOT </td><td> Highest precedence (tightest grouping).
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>AND </td><td>
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>OR </td><td> Lowest precedence (loosest grouping).
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>
+ When using the enhanced query syntax, parenthesis may be used to override
+ the default precedence of the various operators. For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Return the docid values associated with all documents that contain the</i>
+<i>-- two terms "sqlite" and "database", and/or contain the term "library".</i>
+SELECT docid FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite AND database OR library';
+
+<i>-- This query is equivalent to the above.</i>
+SELECT docid FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite AND database'
+ UNION
+SELECT docid FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'library';
+
+<i>-- Query for the set of documents that contains the term "linux", and at least</i>
+<i>-- one of the phrases "sqlite database" and "sqlite library".</i>
+SELECT docid FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH '("sqlite database" OR "sqlite library") AND linux';
+
+<i>-- This query is equivalent to the above.</i>
+SELECT docid FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'linux'
+ INTERSECT
+SELECT docid FROM (
+ SELECT docid FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH '"sqlite library"'
+ UNION
+ SELECT docid FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH '"sqlite database"'
+);
+</pre></div>
+
+
+<h2 id="set_operations_using_the_standard_query_syntax"><span>3.2. </span>Set Operations Using The Standard Query Syntax</h2>
+
+<p>
+ FTS query set operations using the standard query syntax are similar, but
+ not identical, to set operations with the enhanced query syntax. There
+ are four differences, as follows:
+
+</p><ol>
+ <li value="1"><p> Only the implicit version of the AND operator is supported.
+ Specifying the string "AND" as part of a standard query syntax query is
+ interpreted as a term query for the set of documents containing the term
+ "and".
+</p></li></ol>
+
+<ol>
+ <li value="2"><p> Parenthesis are not supported.
+</p></li></ol>
+
+<ol>
+ <li value="3"><p> The NOT operator is not supported. Instead of the NOT
+ operator, the standard query syntax supports a unary "-" operator that
+ may be applied to basic term and term-prefix queries (but not to phrase
+ or NEAR queries). A term or term-prefix that has a unary "-" operator
+ attached to it may not appear as an operand to an OR operator. An FTS
+ query may not consist entirely of terms or term-prefix queries with unary
+ "-" operators attached to them.
+</p></li></ol>
+
+<div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Search for the set of documents that contain the term "sqlite" but do</i>
+<i>-- not contain the term "database".</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite -database';
+</pre></div>
+
+<ol>
+ <li value="4"><p> The relative precedence of the set operations is different.
+ In particular, using the standard query syntax the "OR" operator has a
+ higher precedence than "AND". The precedence of operators when using the
+ standard query syntax is:
+</p></li></ol>
+
+<table striped="1" style="margin:1em auto; width:80%; border-spacing:0">
+ <tr style="text-align:left"><th>Operator</th><th>Standard Query Syntax Precedence
+ </th></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>Unary "-" </td><td> Highest precedence (tightest grouping).
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>OR </td><td>
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>AND </td><td> Lowest precedence (loosest grouping).
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<ol><li style="list-style:none">
+ The following example illustrates precedence of operators using the standard
+ query syntax:
+</li></ol>
+
+<div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Search for documents that contain at least one of the terms "database"</i>
+<i>-- and "sqlite", and also contain the term "library". Because of the differences</i>
+<i>-- in operator precedences, this query would have a different interpretation using</i>
+<i>-- the enhanced query syntax.</i>
+SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite OR database library';
+</pre></div>
+
+<a name="snippet"></a>
+
+<h1 id="auxiliary_functions_snippet_offsets_and_matchinfo"><span>4. </span>Auxiliary Functions - Snippet, Offsets and Matchinfo</h1>
+
+<p>
+ The FTS3 and FTS4 modules provide three special SQL scalar functions that may be useful
+ to the developers of full-text query systems: "snippet", "offsets" and
+ "matchinfo". The purpose of the "snippet" and "offsets" functions is to allow
+ the user to identify the location of queried terms in the returned documents.
+ The "matchinfo" function provides the user with metrics that may be useful
+ for filtering or sorting query results according to relevance.
+
+</p><p>
+ The first argument to all three special SQL scalar functions
+ must be the <a href="fts3.html#hiddencol">FTS hidden column</a> of the FTS table that the function is
+ applied to. The <a href="fts3.html#hiddencol">FTS hidden column</a> is an automatically-generated column found on
+ all FTS tables that has the same name as the FTS table itself.
+ For example, given an FTS table named "mail":
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>SELECT offsets(mail) FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH &lt;full-text query expression&gt;;
+SELECT snippet(mail) FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH &lt;full-text query expression&gt;;
+SELECT matchinfo(mail) FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH &lt;full-text query expression&gt;;
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ The three auxiliary functions are only useful within a SELECT statement that
+ uses the FTS table's full-text index. If used within a SELECT that uses
+ the "query by rowid" or "linear scan" strategies, then the snippet and
+ offsets both return an empty string, and the matchinfo function returns
+ a blob value zero bytes in size.
+
+</p><p id="matchable">
+ All three auxiliary functions extract a set of "matchable phrases" from
+ the FTS query expression to work with. The set of matchable phrases for
+ a given query consists of all phrases (including unquoted tokens and
+ token prefixes) in the expression except those that are prefixed with
+ a unary "-" operator (standard syntax) or are part of a sub-expression
+ that is used as the right-hand operand of a NOT operator.
+
+</p><p>
+ With the following provisos, each series of tokens in the FTS table that
+ matches one of the matchable phrases in the query expression is known as a
+ "phrase match":
+
+</p><ol>
+ <li> If a matchable phrase is part of a series of phrases connected by
+ NEAR operators in the FTS query expression, then each phrase match
+ must be sufficiently close to other phrase matches of the relevant
+ types to satisfy the NEAR condition.
+
+ </li><li> If the matchable phrase in the FTS query is restricted to matching
+ data in a specified FTS table column, then only phrase matches that
+ occur within that column are considered.
+</li></ol>
+
+<a name="offsets"></a>
+
+<h2 id="the_offsets_function"><span>4.1. </span>The Offsets Function</h2>
+
+<p>
+ For a SELECT query that uses the full-text index, the offsets() function
+ returns a text value containing a series of space-separated integers. For
+ each term in each <a href="#matchable">phrase match</a> of the current row,
+ there are four integers in the returned list. Each set of four integers is
+ interpreted as follows:
+
+</p><table striped="1" style="margin:1em auto; width:80%; border-spacing:0">
+ <tr style="text-align:left"><th>Integer </th><th>Interpretation
+ </th></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>0
+ </td><td>The column number that the term instance occurs in (0 for the
+ leftmost column of the FTS table, 1 for the next leftmost, etc.).
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>1
+ </td><td>The term number of the matching term within the full-text query
+ expression. Terms within a query expression are numbered starting
+ from 0 in the order that they occur.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>2
+ </td><td>The byte offset of the matching term within the column.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>3
+ </td><td>The size of the matching term in bytes.
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>
+ The following block contains examples that use the offsets function.
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE mail USING fts3(subject, body);
+INSERT INTO mail VALUES('hello world', 'This message is a hello world message.');
+INSERT INTO mail VALUES('urgent: serious', 'This mail is seen as a more serious mail');
+
+<i>-- The following query returns a single row (as it matches only the first</i>
+<i>-- entry in table "mail". The text returned by the offsets function is</i>
+<i>-- "0 0 6 5 1 0 24 5".</i>
+<i>--</i>
+<i>-- The first set of four integers in the result indicate that column 0</i>
+<i>-- contains an instance of term 0 ("world") at byte offset 6. The term instance</i>
+<i>-- is 5 bytes in size. The second set of four integers shows that column 1</i>
+<i>-- of the matched row contains an instance of term 0 ("world") at byte offset</i>
+<i>-- 24. Again, the term instance is 5 bytes in size.</i>
+SELECT offsets(mail) FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH 'world';
+
+<i>-- The following query returns also matches only the first row in table "mail".</i>
+<i>-- In this case the returned text is "1 0 5 7 1 0 30 7".</i>
+SELECT offsets(mail) FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH 'message';
+
+<i>-- The following query matches the second row in table "mail". It returns the</i>
+<i>-- text "1 0 28 7 1 1 36 4". Only those occurrences of terms "serious" and "mail"</i>
+<i>-- that are part of an instance of the phrase "serious mail" are identified; the</i>
+<i>-- other occurrences of "serious" and "mail" are ignored.</i>
+SELECT offsets(mail) FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH '"serious mail"';
+</pre></div>
+
+<a name="snippet"></a>
+
+<h2 id="the_snippet_function"><span>4.2. </span>The Snippet Function</h2>
+
+<p>
+ The snippet function is used to create formatted fragments of document text
+ for display as part of a full-text query results report. The snippet function
+ may be passed between one and six arguments, as follows:
+
+</p><table striped="1" style="margin:1em auto; width:80%; border-spacing:0">
+ <tr style="text-align:left"><th>Argument </th><th>Default Value </th><th>Description
+ </th></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>0 </td><td>N/A
+ </td><td> The first argument to the snippet function must always be the <a href="fts3.html#hiddencol">FTS hidden column</a>
+ of the FTS table being queried and from which the snippet is to be taken. The
+ <a href="fts3.html#hiddencol">FTS hidden column</a> is an automatically generated column with the same name as the
+ FTS table itself.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>1 </td><td>"&lt;b&gt;"
+ </td><td> The "start match" text.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>2 </td><td>"&lt;/b&gt;"
+ </td><td> The "end match" text.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>3 </td><td>"&lt;b&gt;...&lt;/b&gt;"
+ </td><td> The "ellipses" text.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>4 </td><td>-1
+ </td><td> The FTS table column number to extract the returned fragments of
+ text from. Columns are numbered from left to right starting with
+ zero. A negative value indicates that the text may be extracted
+ from any column.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>5 </td><td>-15
+ </td><td> The absolute value of this integer argument is used as the
+ (approximate) number of tokens to include in the returned text
+ value. The maximum allowable absolute value is 64. The value of
+ this argument is referred to as <i>N</i> in the discussion below.
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>
+ The snippet function first attempts to find a fragment of text consisting
+ of <i>|N|</i> tokens within the current row that contains at least one phrase
+ match for each matchable phrase matched somewhere in the current row,
+ where <i>|N|</i> is the absolute value of the sixth argument passed to the
+ snippet function. If the text stored in a single column contains less than
+ <i>|N|</i> tokens, then the entire column value is considered. Text fragments
+ may not span multiple columns.
+
+</p><p>
+ If such a text fragment can be found, it is returned with the following
+ modifications:
+
+</p><ul>
+ <li> If the text fragment does not begin at the start of a column value,
+ the "ellipses" text is prepended to it.
+ </li><li> If the text fragment does not finish at the end of a column value,
+ the "ellipses" text is appended to it.
+ </li><li> For each token in the text fragment that is part of a phrase match,
+ the "start match" text is inserted into the fragment before the token,
+ and the "end match" text is inserted immediately after it.
+</li></ul>
+
+<p>
+ If more than one such fragment can be found, then fragments that contain
+ a larger number of "extra" phrase matches are favored. The start of
+ the selected text fragment may be moved a few tokens forward or backward
+ to attempt to concentrate the phrase matches toward the center of the
+ fragment.
+
+</p><p>
+ Assuming <i>N</i> is a positive value, if no fragments can be found that
+ contain a phrase match corresponding to each matchable phrase, the snippet
+ function attempts to find two fragments of approximately <i>N</i>/2 tokens
+ that between them contain at least one phrase match for each matchable phrase
+ matched by the current row. If this fails, attempts are made to find three
+ fragments of <i>N</i>/3 tokens each and finally four <i>N</i>/4 token
+ fragments. If a set of four fragments cannot be found that encompasses the
+ required phrase matches, the four fragments of <i>N</i>/4 tokens that provide
+ the best coverage are selected.
+
+</p><p>
+ If <i>N</i> is a negative value, and no single fragment can be found
+ containing the required phrase matches, the snippet function searches
+ for two fragments of <i>|N|</i> tokens each, then three, then four. In
+ other words, if the specified value of <i>N</i> is negative, the sizes
+ of the fragments is not decreased if more than one fragment is required
+ to provide the desired phrase match coverage.
+
+</p><p>
+ After the <i>M</i> fragments have been located, where <i>M</i> is between
+ two and four as described in the paragraphs above, they are joined together
+ in sorted order with the "ellipses" text separating them. The three
+ modifications enumerated earlier are performed on the text before it is
+ returned.
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><b>Note: In this block of examples, newlines and whitespace characters have
+been inserted into the document inserted into the FTS table, and the expected
+results described in SQL comments. This is done to enhance readability only,
+they would not be present in actual SQLite commands or output.</b>
+
+<i>-- Create and populate an FTS table.</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE text USING fts4();
+INSERT INTO text VALUES('
+ During 30 Nov-1 Dec, 2-3oC drops. Cool in the upper portion, minimum temperature 14-16oC
+ and cool elsewhere, minimum temperature 17-20oC. Cold to very cold on mountaintops,
+ minimum temperature 6-12oC. Northeasterly winds 15-30 km/hr. After that, temperature
+ increases. Northeasterly winds 15-30 km/hr.
+');
+
+<i>-- The following query returns the text value:</i>
+<i>--</i>
+<i>-- "&lt;b&gt;...&lt;/b&gt;cool elsewhere, minimum temperature 17-20oC. &lt;b&gt;Cold&lt;/b&gt; to very </i>
+<i>-- &lt;b&gt;cold&lt;/b&gt; on mountaintops, minimum temperature 6&lt;b&gt;...&lt;/b&gt;".</i>
+<i>--</i>
+SELECT snippet(text) FROM text WHERE text MATCH 'cold';
+
+<i>-- The following query returns the text value:</i>
+<i>--</i>
+<i>-- "...the upper portion, &#91;minimum&#93; &#91;temperature&#93; 14-16oC and cool elsewhere,</i>
+<i>-- &#91;minimum&#93; &#91;temperature&#93; 17-20oC. Cold..."</i>
+<i>--</i>
+SELECT snippet(text, '&#91;', '&#93;', '...') FROM text WHERE text MATCH '"min* tem*"'
+</pre></div>
+
+<a name="matchinfo"></a>
+<h2 id="matchinfo" tags="matchinfo"><span>4.3. </span>The Matchinfo Function</h2>
+
+<p>
+ The matchinfo function returns a blob value. If it is used within a query
+ that does not use the full-text index (a "query by rowid" or "linear scan"),
+ then the blob is zero bytes in size. Otherwise, the blob consists of zero
+ or more 32-bit unsigned integers in machine byte-order. The exact number
+ of integers in the returned array depends on both the query and the value
+ of the second argument (if any) passed to the matchinfo function.
+
+</p><p>
+ The matchinfo function is called with either one or two arguments. As for
+ all auxiliary functions, the first argument must be the special
+ <a href="fts3.html#hiddencol">FTS hidden column</a>. The second argument, if it is specified, must be a text value
+ comprised only of the characters 'p', 'c', 'n', 'a', 'l', 's', 'x', 'y' and 'b'.
+ If no second argument is explicitly supplied, it defaults to "pcx". The
+ second argument is referred to as the "format string" below.
+
+</p><p>
+ Characters in the matchinfo format string are processed from left to right.
+ Each character in the format string causes one or more 32-bit unsigned
+ integer values to be added to the returned array. The "values" column in
+ the following table contains the number of integer values appended to the
+ output buffer for each supported format string character. In the formula
+ given, <i>cols</i> is the number of columns in the FTS table, and
+ <i>phrases</i> is the number of <a href="#matchable">matchable phrases</a> in
+ the query.
+
+</p><table striped="1" style="margin:1em auto; width:80%; border-spacing:0">
+ <tr style="text-align:left"><th>Character</th><th>Values</th><th>Description
+ </th></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>p </td><td>1 </td><td>The number of matchable phrases in the query.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>c </td><td>1 </td><td>The number of user defined columns in the FTS
+ table (i.e. not including the docid or the <a href="fts3.html#hiddencol">FTS hidden column</a>).
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>x </td><td style="white-space:nowrap">3 * <i>cols</i> * <i>phrases</i>
+ </td><td><a name="matchinfo-x"></a>
+
+ For each distinct combination of a phrase and table column, the
+ following three values:
+ <ul>
+ <li> In the current row, the number of times the phrase appears in
+ the column.
+ </li><li> The total number of times the phrase appears in the column in
+ all rows in the FTS table.
+ </li><li> The total number of rows in the FTS table for which the
+ column contains at least one instance of the phrase.
+ </li></ul>
+ The first set of three values corresponds to the left-most column
+ of the table (column 0) and the left-most matchable phrase in the
+ query (phrase 0). If the table has more than one column, the second
+ set of three values in the output array correspond to phrase 0 and
+ column 1. Followed by phrase 0, column 2 and so on for all columns of
+ the table. And so on for phrase 1, column 0, then phrase 1, column 1
+ etc. In other words, the data for occurrences of phrase <i>p</i> in
+ column <i>c</i> may be found using the following formula:
+<pre>
+ hits_this_row = array&#91;3 * (c + p*cols) + 0&#93;
+ hits_all_rows = array&#91;3 * (c + p*cols) + 1&#93;
+ docs_with_hits = array&#91;3 * (c + p*cols) + 2&#93;
+</pre>
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>y</td><td style="white-space:nowrap"><i>cols</i> * <i>phrases</i>
+ </td><td><a name="matchinfo-y"></a>
+
+ For each distinct combination of a phrase and table column, the
+ number of usable phrase matches that appear in the column. This is
+ usually identical to the first value in each set of three returned by the
+ <a href="fts3.html#matchinfo-x">matchinfo 'x' flag</a>. However, the number of hits reported by the
+ 'y' flag is zero for any phrase that is part of a sub-expression
+ that does not match the current row. This makes a difference for
+ expressions that contain AND operators that are descendants of OR
+ operators. For example, consider the expression:
+<pre>
+ a OR (b AND c)
+</pre>
+ and the document:
+<pre>
+ "a c d"
+</pre>
+ The <a href="fts3.html#matchinfo-x">matchinfo 'x' flag</a> would report a single hit for the phrases "a" and "c".
+ However, the 'y' directive reports the number of hits for "c" as zero, as
+ it is part of a sub-expression that does not match the document - (b AND c).
+ For queries that do not contain AND operators descended from OR
+ operators, the result values returned by 'y' are always the same as
+ those returned by 'x'.
+
+<p style="margin-left:0;margin-right:0">
+ The first value in the array of integer values corresponds to the
+ leftmost column of the table (column 0) and the first phrase in the query
+ (phrase 0). The values corresponding to other column/phrase combinations
+ may be located using the following formula:
+
+</p><pre>
+ hits_for_phrase_p_column_c = array&#91;c + p*cols&#93;
+</pre>
+ For queries that use OR expressions, or those that use LIMIT or return
+ many rows, the 'y' matchinfo option may be faster than 'x'.
+
+</td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>b</td><td style="white-space:nowrap"><i>((cols+31)/32)</i> * <i>phrases</i>
+</td><td><a name="matchinfo-b"></a>
+
+
+ The matchinfo 'b' flag provides similar information to the
+ <a href="fts3.html#matchinfo-y">matchinfo 'y' flag</a>, but in a more
+ compact form. Instead of the precise number of hits, 'b' provides a single
+ boolean flag for each phrase/column combination. If the phrase is present in
+ the column at least once (i.e. if the corresponding integer output of 'y' would
+ be non-zero), the corresponding flag is set. Otherwise cleared.
+
+<p style="margin-left:0;margin-right:0">
+ If the table has 32 or fewer columns, a single unsigned integer is output for
+ each phrase in the query. The least significant bit of the integer is set if the
+ phrase appears at least once in column 0. The second least significant bit is
+ set if the phrase appears once or more in column 1. And so on.
+
+</p><p style="margin-left:0;margin-right:0">
+ If the table has more than 32 columns, an extra integer is added to the output
+ of each phrase for each extra 32 columns or part thereof. Integers
+ corresponding to the same phrase are clumped together. For example, if a table
+ with 45 columns is queried for two phrases, 4 integers are output. The first
+ corresponds to phrase 0 and columns 0-31 of the table. The second integer
+ contains data for phrase 0 and columns 32-44, and so on.
+
+</p><p style="margin-left:0;margin-right:0">
+ For example, if nCol is the number of columns in the table, to determine if
+ phrase p is present in column c:
+
+</p><pre>
+ p_is_in_c = array&#91;p * ((nCol+31)/32)&#93; & (1 &lt;&lt; (c % 32))
+</pre>
+
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>n </td><td>1 </td><td>The number of rows in the FTS4 table. This value is
+ only available when querying FTS4 tables, not FTS3.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>a </td><td><i>cols</i> </td><td>For each column, the average number of
+ tokens in the text values stored in the column (considering all rows in
+ the FTS4 table). This value is only available when querying FTS4 tables,
+ not FTS3.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>l </td><td><i>cols</i> </td><td>
+ For each column, the length of the value stored in the current row of the
+ FTS4 table, in tokens. This value is only available when querying
+ FTS4 tables, not FTS3. And only if the "matchinfo=fts3" directive was not
+ specified as part of the "CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE" statement used to create
+ the FTS4 table.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>s </td><td><i>cols</i> </td><td>For each column, the length of the longest
+ subsequence of phrase matches that the column value has in common
+ with the query text. For example, if a table column contains the text
+ 'a b c d e' and the query is 'a c "d e"', then the length of the longest
+ common subsequence is 2 (phrase "c" followed by phrase "d e").
+
+
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>
+ For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Create and populate an FTS4 table with two columns:</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE t1 USING fts4(a, b);
+INSERT INTO t1 VALUES('transaction default models default', 'Non transaction reads');
+INSERT INTO t1 VALUES('the default transaction', 'these semantics present');
+INSERT INTO t1 VALUES('single request', 'default data');
+
+<i>-- In the following query, no format string is specified and so it defaults</i>
+<i>-- to "pcx". It therefore returns a single row consisting of a single blob</i>
+<i>-- value 80 bytes in size (20 32-bit integers - 1 for "p", 1 for "c" and</i>
+<i>-- 3*2*3 for "x"). If each block of 4 bytes in</i> the blob is interpreted
+<i>-- as an unsigned integer in machine byte-order, the values will be:</i>
+<i>--</i>
+<i>-- 3 2 1 3 2 0 1 1 1 2 2 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1</i>
+<i>--</i>
+<i>-- The row returned corresponds to the second entry inserted into table t1.</i>
+<i>-- The first two integers in the blob show that the query contained three</i>
+<i>-- phrases and the table being queried has two columns. The next block of</i>
+<i>-- three integers describes column 0 (in this case column "a") and phrase</i>
+<i>-- 0 (in this case "default"). The current row contains 1 hit for "default"</i>
+<i>-- in column 0, of a total of 3 hits for "default" that occur in column</i>
+<i>-- 0 of any table row. The 3 hits are spread across 2 different rows.</i>
+<i>--</i>
+<i>-- The next set of three integers (0 1 1) pertain to the hits for "default"</i>
+<i>-- in column 1 of the table (0 in this row, 1 in all rows, spread across </i>
+<i>-- 1 rows).</i>
+<i>--</i>
+SELECT matchinfo(t1) FROM t1 WHERE t1 MATCH 'default transaction "these semantics"';
+
+<i>-- The format string for this query is "ns". The output array will therefore</i>
+<i>-- contain 3 integer values - 1 for "n" and 2 for "s". The query returns</i>
+<i>-- two rows (the first two rows in the table match). The values returned are:</i>
+<i>--</i>
+<i>-- 3 1 1</i>
+<i>-- 3 2 0</i>
+<i>--</i>
+<i>-- The first value in the matchinfo array returned for both rows is 3 (the </i>
+<i>-- number of rows in the table). The following two values are the lengths </i>
+<i>-- of the longest common subsequence of phrase matches in each column.</i>
+SELECT matchinfo(t1, 'ns') FROM t1 WHERE t1 MATCH 'default transaction';
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ The matchinfo function is much faster than either the snippet or offsets
+ functions. This is because the implementation of both snippet and offsets
+ is required to retrieve the documents being analyzed from disk, whereas
+ all data required by matchinfo is available as part of the same portions
+ of the full-text index that are required to implement the full-text query
+ itself. This means that of the following two queries, the first may be
+ an order of magnitude faster than the second:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>SELECT docid, matchinfo(tbl) FROM tbl WHERE tbl MATCH &lt;query expression&gt;;
+SELECT docid, offsets(tbl) FROM tbl WHERE tbl MATCH &lt;query expression&gt;;
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ The matchinfo function provides all the information required to calculate
+ probabilistic "bag-of-words" relevancy scores such as
+ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okapi_BM25">Okapi BM25/BM25F</a> that may
+ be used to order results in a full-text search application. Appendix A of this
+ document, "<a href="fts3.html#appendix_a">search application tips</a>", contains an example of using the
+ matchinfo() function efficiently.
+
+</p><a name="fts4aux"></a>
+<h1 id="fts4aux" tags="fts4aux"><span>5. </span>Fts4aux - Direct Access to the Full-Text Index</h1>
+
+<p>
+ As of <a href="releaselog/3_7_6.html">version 3.7.6</a> (2011-04-12),
+ SQLite includes a new virtual table module called
+ "fts4aux", which can be used to inspect the full-text index of an existing
+ FTS table directly. Despite its name, fts4aux works just as well with FTS3
+ tables as it does with FTS4 tables. Fts4aux tables are read-only. The only
+ way to modify the contents of an fts4aux table is by modifying the
+ contents of the associated FTS table. The fts4aux module is automatically
+ included in all <a href="fts3.html#compiling_and_enabling_fts3_and_fts4">builds that include FTS</a>.
+
+</p><p>
+ An fts4aux virtual table is constructed with one or two arguments. When
+ used with a single argument, that argument is the unqualified name of the
+ FTS table that it will be used to access. To access a table in a different
+ database (for example, to create a TEMP fts4aux table that will access an
+ FTS3 table in the MAIN database) use the two-argument form and give the
+ name of the target database (ex: "main") in the first argument and the name
+ of the FTS3/4 table as the second argument. (The two-argument form of
+ fts4aux was added for SQLite <a href="releaselog/3_7_17.html">version 3.7.17</a> (2013-05-20)
+ and will throw an error in prior releases.)
+ For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Create an FTS4 table</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE ft USING fts4(x, y);
+
+<i>-- Create an fts4aux table to access the full-text index for table "ft"</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE ft_terms USING fts4aux(ft);
+
+<i>-- Create a TEMP fts4aux table accessing the "ft" table in "main"</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE temp.ft_terms_2 USING fts4aux(main,ft);
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ For each term present in the FTS table, there are between 2 and N+1 rows
+ in the fts4aux table, where N is the number of user-defined columns in
+ the associated FTS table. An fts4aux table always has the same four columns,
+ as follows, from left to right:
+
+</p><table striped="1" style="margin:1em auto; width:80%; border-spacing:0">
+ <tr style="text-align:left"><th>Column Name</th><th>Column Contents
+ </th></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>term</td><td>
+ Contains the text of the term for this row.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>col</td><td>
+ This column may contain either the text value '*' (i.e. a single
+ character, U+002a) or an integer between 0 and N-1, where N is
+ again the number of user-defined columns in the corresponding FTS table.
+
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>documents</td><td>
+ This column always contains an integer value greater than zero.
+ <br><br>
+ If the "col" column contains the value '*', then this column
+ contains the number of rows of the FTS table that contain at least one
+ instance of the term (in any column). If col contains an integer
+ value, then this column contains the number of rows of the FTS table that
+ contain at least one instance of the term in the column identified by
+ the col value. As usual, the columns of the FTS table are numbered
+ from left to right, starting with zero.
+
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>occurrences</td><td>
+ This column also always contains an integer value greater than zero.
+ <br><br>
+ If the "col" column contains the value '*', then this column
+ contains the total number of instances of the term in all rows of the
+ FTS table (in any column). Otherwise, if col contains an integer
+ value, then this column contains the total number of instances of the
+ term that appear in the FTS table column identified by the col
+ value.
+
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>languageid <i>(hidden)</i></td><td>
+ <a name="f4alid"></a>
+
+ This column determines which <a href="fts3.html#*fts4languageid">languageid</a> is used to
+ extract vocabulary from the FTS3/4 table.
+ <br><br>
+ The default value for languageid is 0. If an alternative language
+ is specified in WHERE clause constraints, then that alternative is
+ used instead of 0. There can only be a single languageid per query.
+ In other words, the WHERE clause cannot contain a range constraint
+ or IN operator on the languageid.
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>
+ For example, using the tables created above:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>INSERT INTO ft(x, y) VALUES('Apple banana', 'Cherry');
+INSERT INTO ft(x, y) VALUES('Banana Date Date', 'cherry');
+INSERT INTO ft(x, y) VALUES('Cherry Elderberry', 'Elderberry');
+
+<i>-- The following query returns this data:</i>
+<i>--</i>
+<i>-- apple | * | 1 | 1</i>
+<i>-- apple | 0 | 1 | 1</i>
+<i>-- banana | * | 2 | 2</i>
+<i>-- banana | 0 | 2 | 2</i>
+<i>-- cherry | * | 3 | 3</i>
+<i>-- cherry | 0 | 1 | 1</i>
+<i>-- cherry | 1 | 2 | 2</i>
+<i>-- date | * | 1 | 2</i>
+<i>-- date | 0 | 1 | 2</i>
+<i>-- elderberry | * | 1 | 2</i>
+<i>-- elderberry | 0 | 1 | 1</i>
+<i>-- elderberry | 1 | 1 | 1</i>
+<i>--</i>
+SELECT term, col, documents, occurrences FROM ft_terms;
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ In the example, the values in the "term" column are all lower case,
+ even though they were inserted into table "ft" in mixed case. This is because
+ an fts4aux table contains the terms as extracted from the document text
+ by the <a href="fts3.html#tokenizer">tokenizer</a>. In this case, since table "ft" uses the
+ <a href="fts3.html#tokenizer">simple tokenizer</a>, this means all terms have been folded to
+ lower case. Also, there is (for example) no row with column "term"
+ set to "apple" and column "col" set to 1. Since there are no instances
+ of the term "apple" in column 1, no row is present in the fts4aux table.
+
+</p><p>
+ During a transaction, some of the data written to an FTS table may be
+ cached in memory and written to the database only when the transaction is
+ committed. However the implementation of the fts4aux module is only able
+ to read data from the database. In practice this means that if an fts4aux
+ table is queried from within a transaction in which the associated
+ FTS table has been modified, the results of the query are likely to reflect
+ only a (possibly empty) subset of the changes made.
+
+</p><a name="fts4_options"></a>
+<h1 id="fts4_options" tags="FTS4 options"><span>6. </span>FTS4 Options</h1>
+
+<p>
+ If the "CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE" statement specifies module FTS4 (not FTS3),
+ then special directives - FTS4 options - similar to the "tokenize=*" option
+ may also appear in place of column names. An FTS4 option consists of the
+ option name, followed by an "=" character, followed by the option value.
+ The option value may optionally be enclosed in single or double quotes, with
+ embedded quote characters escaped in the same way as for SQL literals. There
+ may not be whitespace on either side of the "=" character. For example,
+ to create an FTS4 table with the value of option "matchinfo" set to "fts3":
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Create a reduced-footprint FTS4 table.</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts4(author, document, matchinfo=fts3);
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ FTS4 currently supports the following options:
+
+</p><table striped="1" style="margin:1em auto; width:80%; border-spacing:0">
+ <tr style="text-align:left"><th>Option</th><th>Interpretation
+ </th></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>compress</td><td>
+ The compress option is used to specify the compress function. It is an error to
+ specify a compress function without also specifying an uncompress
+ function. <a href="fts3.html#the_compress_and_uncompress_options">See below</a> for details.
+
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>content</td><td>
+ The content allows the text being indexed to be
+ stored in a separate table distinct from the FTS4 table,
+ or even outside of SQLite.
+
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>languageid</td><td>
+ The languageid option causes the FTS4 table to have an additional hidden
+ integer column that identifies the language of the text contained in
+ each row. The use of the languageid option allows the same FTS4 table
+ to hold text in multiple languages or scripts, each with different tokenizer
+ rules, and to query each language independently of the others.
+
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>matchinfo</td><td>
+ When set to the value "fts3", the matchinfo option reduces the amount of
+ information stored by FTS4 with the consequence that the "l" option of
+ <a href="fts3.html#matchinfo">matchinfo()</a> is no longer available.
+
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>notindexed</td><td>
+ This option is used to specify the name of a column for which data is
+ not indexed. Values stored in columns that are not indexed are not
+ matched by MATCH queries. Nor are they recognized by auxiliary functions.
+ A single CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE statement may have any number of notindexed
+ options.
+
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>order</td><td>
+ <a name="fts4order"></a>
+
+ The "order" option may be set to either "DESC" or "ASC" (in upper or
+ lower case). If it is set to "DESC", then FTS4 stores its data in such
+ a way as to optimize returning results in descending order by docid.
+ If it is set to "ASC" (the default), then the data structures are
+ optimized for returning results in ascending order by docid. In other
+ words, if many of the queries run against the FTS4 table use "ORDER BY
+ docid DESC", then it may improve performance to add the "order=desc"
+ option to the CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE statement.
+
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>prefix</td><td>
+ This option may be set to a comma-separated list of positive non-zero
+ integers. For each integer N in the list, a separate index is created
+ in the database file to optimize <a href="fts3.html#termprefix">prefix queries</a> where
+ the query term is N bytes in length, not including the '*' character,
+ when encoded using UTF-8. <a href="fts3.html#the_prefix_option">See below</a> for details.
+
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>uncompress</td><td>
+ This option is used to specify the uncompress function. It is an error to
+ specify an uncompress function without also specifying a compress
+ function. <a href="fts3.html#the_compress_and_uncompress_options">See below</a> for details.
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>
+ When using FTS4, specifying a column name that contains an "=" character
+ and is not either a "tokenize=*" specification or a recognized FTS4 option
+ is an error. With FTS3, the first token in the unrecognized directive is
+ interpreted as a column name. Similarly, specifying multiple "tokenize=*"
+ directives in a single table declaration is an error when using FTS4, whereas
+ the second and subsequent "tokenize=*" directives are interpreted as column
+ names by FTS3. For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- An error. FTS4 does not recognize the directive "xyz=abc".</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts4(author, document, xyz=abc);
+
+<i>-- Create an FTS3 table with three columns - "author", "document"</i>
+<i>-- and "xyz".</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts3(author, document, xyz=abc);
+
+<i>-- An error. FTS4 does not allow multiple tokenize=* directives</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts4(tokenize=porter, tokenize=simple);
+
+<i>-- Create an FTS3 table with a single column named "tokenize". The</i>
+<i>-- table uses the "porter" tokenizer.</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts3(tokenize=porter, tokenize=simple);
+
+<i>-- An error. Cannot create a table with two columns named "tokenize".</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts3(tokenize=porter, tokenize=simple, tokenize=icu);
+</pre></div>
+
+<a name="*fts4compression"></a>
+
+<a name="the_compress_and_uncompress_options"></a>
+<h2 tags="fts4 compress option" id="the_compress_and_uncompress_options"><span>6.1. </span>The compress= and uncompress= options</h2>
+
+<p>
+ The compress and uncompress options allow FTS4 content to be stored in
+ the database in a compressed form. Both options should be set to the name
+ of an SQL scalar function registered using <a href="c3ref/create_function.html">sqlite3_create_function()</a>
+ that accepts a single argument.
+
+</p><p>
+ The compress function should return a compressed version of the value
+ passed to it as an argument. Each time data is written to the FTS4 table,
+ each column value is passed to the compress function and the result value
+ stored in the database. The compress function may return any type of SQLite
+ value (blob, text, real, integer or null).
+
+</p><p>
+ The uncompress function should uncompress data previously compressed by
+ the compress function. In other words, for all SQLite values X, it should
+ be true that uncompress(compress(X)) equals X. When data that has been
+ compressed by the compress function is read from the database by FTS4, it
+ is passed to the uncompress function before it is used.
+
+</p><p>
+ If the specified compress or uncompress functions do not exist, the table
+ may still be created. An error is not returned until the FTS4 table is
+ read (if the uncompress function does not exist) or written (if it is the
+ compress function that does not exist).
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Create an FTS4 table that stores data in compressed form. This</i>
+<i>-- assumes that the scalar functions zip() and unzip() have been (or</i>
+<i>-- will be) added to the database handle.</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts4(author, document, compress=zip, uncompress=unzip);
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ When implementing the compress and uncompress functions it is important to
+ pay attention to data types. Specifically, when a user reads a value from
+ a compressed FTS table, the value returned by FTS is exactly the same
+ as the value returned by the uncompress function, including the data type.
+ If that data type is not the same as the data type of the original value as
+ passed to the compress function (for example if the uncompress function is
+ returning BLOB when compress was originally passed TEXT), then the users
+ query may not function as expected.
+
+<a name="*fts4content"></a>
+
+</p><a name="the_content_option_"></a>
+<h2 tags="fts4 content option" id="the_content_option_"><span>6.2. </span>The content= option </h2>
+
+<p>
+ The content option allows FTS4 to forego storing the text being indexed.
+ The content option can be used in two ways:
+
+</p><ul>
+<li><p> The indexed documents are not stored within the SQLite database
+ at all (a "contentless" FTS4 table), or
+
+</p></li><li><p> The indexed documents are stored in a database table created and
+ managed by the user (an "external content" FTS4 table).
+</p></li></ul>
+
+<p>
+ Because the indexed documents themselves are usually much larger than
+ the full-text index, the content option can be used to achieve
+ significant space savings.
+
+</p><a name="_contentless_fts4_tables_"></a>
+<h3 tags="contentless fts4 tables" id="_contentless_fts4_tables_"><span>6.2.1. </span> Contentless FTS4 Tables </h3>
+
+<p>
+ In order to create an FTS4 table that does not store a copy of the indexed
+ documents at all, the content option should be set to an empty string.
+ For example, the following SQL creates such an FTS4 table with three
+ columns - "a", "b", and "c":
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE t1 USING fts4(content="", a, b, c);
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ Data can be inserted into such an FTS4 table using an INSERT statements.
+ However, unlike ordinary FTS4 tables, the user must supply an explicit
+ integer docid value. For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- This statement is Ok:</i>
+INSERT INTO t1(docid, a, b, c) VALUES(1, 'a b c', 'd e f', 'g h i');
+
+<i>-- This statement causes an error, as no docid value has been provided:</i>
+INSERT INTO t1(a, b, c) VALUES('j k l', 'm n o', 'p q r');
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ It is not possible to UPDATE or DELETE a row stored in a contentless FTS4
+ table. Attempting to do so is an error.
+
+</p><p>
+ Contentless FTS4 tables also support SELECT statements. However, it is
+ an error to attempt to retrieve the value of any table column other than
+ the docid column. The auxiliary function matchinfo() may be used, but
+ snippet() and offsets() may not. For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- The following statements are Ok:</i>
+SELECT docid FROM t1 WHERE t1 MATCH 'xxx';
+SELECT docid FROM t1 WHERE a MATCH 'xxx';
+SELECT matchinfo(t1) FROM t1 WHERE t1 MATCH 'xxx';
+
+<i>-- The following statements all cause errors, as the value of columns</i>
+<i>-- other than docid are required to evaluate them.</i>
+SELECT * FROM t1;
+SELECT a, b FROM t1 WHERE t1 MATCH 'xxx';
+SELECT docid FROM t1 WHERE a LIKE 'xxx%';
+SELECT snippet(t1) FROM t1 WHERE t1 MATCH 'xxx';
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ Errors related to attempting to retrieve column values other than docid
+ are runtime errors that occur within sqlite3_step(). In some cases, for
+ example if the MATCH expression in a SELECT query matches zero rows, there
+ may be no error at all even if a statement does refer to column values
+ other than docid.
+
+</p><a name="_external_content_fts4_tables_"></a>
+<h3 tags="external content fts4 tables" id="_external_content_fts4_tables_"><span>6.2.2. </span> External Content FTS4 Tables </h3>
+
+<p>
+ An "external content" FTS4 table is similar to a contentless table, except
+ that if evaluation of a query requires the value of a column other than
+ docid, FTS4 attempts to retrieve that value from a table (or view, or
+ virtual table) nominated by the user (hereafter referred to as the "content
+ table"). The FTS4 module never writes to the content table, and writing
+ to the content table does not affect the full-text index. It is the
+ responsibility of the user to ensure that the content table and the
+ full-text index are consistent.
+
+</p><p>
+ An external content FTS4 table is created by setting the content option
+ to the name of a table (or view, or virtual table) that may be queried by
+ FTS4 to retrieve column values when required. If the nominated table does
+ not exist, then an external content table behaves in the same way as
+ a contentless table. For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>CREATE TABLE t2(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, a, b, c);
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE t3 USING fts4(content="t2", a, c);
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ Assuming the nominated table does exist, then its columns must be the same
+ as or a superset of those defined for the FTS table. The external table
+ must also be in the same database file as the FTS table. In other words,
+ The external table cannot be in a different database file connected using
+ <a href="lang_attach.html">ATTACH</a> nor may one of the FTS table and the external content be in the
+ TEMP database when the other is in a persistent database file such as MAIN.
+
+</p><p>
+ When a users query on the FTS table requires a column value other than
+ docid, FTS attempts to read the requested value from the corresponding column of
+ the row in the content table with a rowid value equal to the current FTS
+ docid. Only the subset of content-table columns duplicated in the FTS/34
+ table declaration can be queried for - to retrieve values from any other
+ columns the content table must be queried directly. Or, if such a row cannot
+ be found in the content table, a NULL value is used instead. For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>CREATE TABLE t2(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, a, b, c);
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE t3 USING fts4(content="t2", b, c);
+
+INSERT INTO t2 VALUES(2, 'a b', 'c d', 'e f');
+INSERT INTO t2 VALUES(3, 'g h', 'i j', 'k l');
+INSERT INTO t3(docid, b, c) SELECT id, b, c FROM t2;
+<i>-- The following query returns a single row with two columns containing
+-- the text values "i j" and "k l".
+--
+-- The query uses the full-text index to discover that the MATCH
+-- term matches the row with docid=3. It then retrieves the values
+-- of columns b and c from the row with rowid=3 in the content table
+-- to return.
+--</i>
+SELECT * FROM t3 WHERE t3 MATCH 'k';
+
+<i>-- Following the UPDATE, the query still returns a single row, this
+-- time containing the text values "xxx" and "yyy". This is because the
+-- full-text index still indicates that the row with docid=3 matches
+-- the FTS4 query 'k', even though the documents stored in the content
+-- table have been modified.
+--</i>
+UPDATE t2 SET b = 'xxx', c = 'yyy' WHERE rowid = 3;
+SELECT * FROM t3 WHERE t3 MATCH 'k';
+
+<i>-- Following the DELETE below, the query returns one row containing two
+-- NULL values. NULL values are returned because FTS is unable to find
+-- a row with rowid=3 within the content table.
+--</i>
+DELETE FROM t2;
+SELECT * FROM t3 WHERE t3 MATCH 'k';
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ When a row is deleted from an external content FTS4 table, FTS4 needs to
+ retrieve the column values of the row being deleted from the content table.
+ This is so that FTS4 can update the full-text index entries for each token
+ that occurs within the deleted row to indicate that row has been
+ deleted. If the content table row cannot be found, or if it contains values
+ inconsistent with the contents of the FTS index, the results can be difficult
+ to predict. The FTS index may be left containing entries corresponding to the
+ deleted row, which can lead to seemingly nonsensical results being returned
+ by subsequent SELECT queries. The same applies when a row is updated, as
+ internally an UPDATE is the same as a DELETE followed by an INSERT.
+
+</p><p>
+ This means that in order to keep an FTS in sync with an external content
+ table, any UPDATE or DELETE operations must be applied first to the FTS
+ table, and then to the external content table. For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>CREATE TABLE t1_real(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, a, b, c, d);
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE t1_fts USING fts4(content="t1_real", b, c);
+
+<i>-- This works. When the row is removed from the FTS table, FTS retrieves
+-- the row with rowid=123 and tokenizes it in order to determine the entries
+-- that must be removed from the full-text index.
+--</i>
+DELETE FROM t1_fts WHERE rowid = 123;
+DELETE FROM t1_real WHERE rowid = 123;
+
+--<i> This <b>does not work</b>. By the time the FTS table is updated, the row
+-- has already been deleted from the underlying content table. As a result
+-- FTS is unable to determine the entries to remove from the FTS index and
+-- so the index and content table are left out of sync.
+--</i>
+DELETE FROM t1_real WHERE rowid = 123;
+DELETE FROM t1_fts WHERE rowid = 123;
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ Instead of writing separately to the full-text index and the content table,
+ some users may wish to use database triggers to keep the full-text index
+ up to date with respect to the set of documents stored in the content table.
+ For example, using the tables from earlier examples:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>CREATE TRIGGER t2_bu BEFORE UPDATE ON t2 BEGIN
+ DELETE FROM t3 WHERE docid=old.rowid;
+END;
+CREATE TRIGGER t2_bd BEFORE DELETE ON t2 BEGIN
+ DELETE FROM t3 WHERE docid=old.rowid;
+END;
+
+CREATE TRIGGER t2_au AFTER UPDATE ON t2 BEGIN
+ INSERT INTO t3(docid, b, c) VALUES(new.rowid, new.b, new.c);
+END;
+CREATE TRIGGER t2_ai AFTER INSERT ON t2 BEGIN
+ INSERT INTO t3(docid, b, c) VALUES(new.rowid, new.b, new.c);
+END;
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ The DELETE trigger must be fired before the actual delete takes place
+ on the content table. This is so that FTS4 can still retrieve the original
+ values in order to update the full-text index. And the INSERT trigger must
+ be fired after the new row is inserted, so as to handle the case where the
+ rowid is assigned automatically within the system. The UPDATE trigger must
+ be split into two parts, one fired before and one after the update of the
+ content table, for the same reasons.
+
+</p><p>
+ The <a href="fts3.html#*fts4rebuidcmd">FTS4 "rebuild" command</a>
+ deletes the entire full-text index and rebuilds it based on the current
+ set of documents in the content table. Assuming again that "t3" is the
+ name of the external content FTS4 table, the rebuild command looks like this:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>INSERT INTO t3(t3) VALUES('rebuild');
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ This command may also be used with ordinary FTS4 tables, for example if
+ the implementation of the tokenizer changes. It is an
+ error to attempt to rebuild the full-text index maintained by a contentless
+ FTS4 table, since no content will be available to do the rebuilding.
+
+
+<a name="*fts4languageid"></a>
+
+</p><a name="the_languageid_option"></a>
+<h2 tags="fts4 languageid option" id="the_languageid_option"><span>6.3. </span>The languageid= option</h2>
+
+<p>
+ When the languageid option is present, it specifies the name of
+ another <a href="vtab.html#hiddencol">hidden column</a> that is added to the FTS4
+ table and which is used to specify the language stored in each row
+ of the FTS4 table. The name of the languageid hidden column must
+ be distinct from all other column names in the FTS4 table. Example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE t1 USING fts4(x, y, languageid="lid")
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ The default value of a languageid column is 0. Any value inserted
+ into a languageid column is converted to a 32-bit (not 64) signed
+ integer.
+
+</p><p>
+ By default, FTS queries (those that use the MATCH operator)
+ consider only those rows with the languageid column set to 0. To
+ query for rows with other languageid values, a constraint of the
+ form "</p><language-id> = <integer>" must be added to the queries
+ WHERE clause. For example:
+
+<div class="codeblock"><pre>SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE t1 MATCH 'abc' AND lid=5;
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ It is not possible for a single FTS query to return rows with
+ different languageid values. The results of adding WHERE clauses
+ that use other operators (e.g. lid!=5, or lid&lt;=5) are undefined.
+
+</p><p>
+ If the content option is used along with the languageid option,
+ then the named languageid column must exist in the content= table
+ (subject to the usual rules - if a query never needs to read the
+ content table then this restriction does not apply).
+
+</p><p>
+ When the languageid option is used, SQLite invokes the xLanguageid()
+ on the sqlite3_tokenizer_module object immediately after the object
+ is created in order to pass in the language id that the
+ tokenizer should use. The xLanguageid() method will never be called
+ more than once for any single tokenizer object. The fact that different
+ languages might be tokenized differently is one reason why no single
+ FTS query can return rows with different languageid values.
+
+
+
+<a name="fts4matchinfo"></a>
+
+</p><a name="the_matchinfo_option"></a>
+<h2 tags="fts4 matchinfo option" id="the_matchinfo_option"><span>6.4. </span>The matchinfo= option</h2>
+
+<p>
+ The matchinfo option may only be set to the value "fts3".
+ Attempting to set matchinfo to anything other than "fts3" is an error.
+ If this option is specified, then some of the extra information stored by
+ FTS4 is omitted. This reduces the amount of disk space consumed by
+ an FTS4 table until it is almost the same as the amount that would
+ be used by the equivalent FTS3 table, but also means that the data
+ accessed by passing the 'l' flag to the <a href="fts3.html#matchinfo">matchinfo()</a> function is
+ not available.
+
+<a name="fts4notindexed"></a>
+
+</p><a name="the_notindexed_option"></a>
+<h2 tags="fts4 notindexed option" id="the_notindexed_option"><span>6.5. </span>The notindexed= option</h2>
+
+<p>
+ Normally, the FTS module maintains an inverted index of all terms in
+ all columns of the table. This option is used to specify the name of
+ a column for which entries should not be added to the index. Multiple
+ "notindexed" options may be used to specify that multiple columns should
+ be omitted from the index. For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Create an FTS4 table for which only the contents of columns c2 and c4</i>
+<i>-- are tokenized and added to the inverted index.</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE t1 USING fts4(c1, c2, c3, c4, notindexed=c1, notindexed=c3);
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ Values stored in unindexed columns are not eligible to match MATCH
+ operators. They do not influence the results of the offsets() or matchinfo()
+ auxiliary functions. Nor will the snippet() function ever return a
+ snippet based on a value stored in an unindexed column.
+
+<a name="fts4prefix"></a>
+
+</p><a name="the_prefix_option"></a>
+<h2 tags="fts4 prefix option" id="the_prefix_option"><span>6.6. </span>The prefix= option</h2>
+
+<p>
+ The FTS4 prefix option causes FTS to index term prefixes of specified lengths
+ in the same way that it always indexes complete terms. The prefix option
+ must be set to a comma separated list of positive non-zero integers.
+ For each value N in the list, prefixes of length N bytes (when encoded
+ using UTF-8) are indexed. FTS4 uses term prefix indexes to speed up
+ <a href="fts3.html#termprefix">prefix queries</a>. The cost, of course, is that indexing term prefixes as
+ well as complete terms increases the database size and slows down write
+ operations on the FTS4 table.
+
+</p><p>
+ Prefix indexes may be used to optimize <a href="fts3.html#termprefix">prefix queries</a> in two cases.
+ If the query is for a prefix of N bytes, then a prefix index created
+ with "prefix=N" provides the best optimization. Or, if no "prefix=N"
+ index is available, a "prefix=N+1" index may be used instead.
+ Using a "prefix=N+1" index is less
+ efficient than a "prefix=N" index, but is better than no prefix index at all.
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Create an FTS4 table with indexes to optimize 2 and 4 byte prefix queries.</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE t1 USING fts4(c1, c2, prefix="2,4");
+
+<i>-- The following two queries are both optimized using the prefix indexes.</i>
+SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE t1 MATCH 'ab*';
+SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE t1 MATCH 'abcd*';
+
+<i>-- The following two queries are both partially optimized using the prefix</i>
+<i>-- indexes. The optimization is not as pronounced as it is for the queries</i>
+<i>-- above, but still an improvement over no prefix indexes at all.</i>
+SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE t1 MATCH 'a*';
+SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE t1 MATCH 'abc*';
+</pre></div>
+
+<a name="*cmds"></a>
+
+<a name="commands"></a>
+<h1 id="commands" tags="commands"><span>7. </span>Special Commands For FTS3 and FTS4</h1>
+
+<p>
+ Special INSERT operates can be used to issue commands to FTS3 and FTS4 tables.
+ Every FTS3 and FTS4 has a hidden, read-only column which is the same name as
+ the table itself. INSERTs into this hidden column are interpreted as commands
+ to the FTS3/4 table. For a table with the name "xyz" the following commands
+ are supported:
+
+</p><ul>
+<li><p>INSERT INTO xyz(xyz) VALUES('optimize');</p>
+</li><li><p>INSERT INTO xyz(xyz) VALUES('rebuild');</p>
+</li><li><p>INSERT INTO xyz(xyz) VALUES('integrity-check');</p>
+</li><li><p>INSERT INTO xyz(xyz) VALUES('merge=X,Y');</p>
+</li><li><p>INSERT INTO xyz(xyz) VALUES('automerge=N');</p>
+</li></ul>
+
+<a name="*fts4optcmd"></a>
+
+<h2 id="optimize"><span>7.1. </span>The "optimize" command</h2>
+
+<p>
+ The "optimize" command causes FTS3/4 to merge together all of its
+ inverted index b-trees into one large and complete b-tree. Doing
+ an optimize will make subsequent queries run faster since there are
+ fewer b-trees to search, and it may reduce disk usage by coalescing
+ redundant entries. However, for a large FTS table, running optimize
+ can be as expensive as running <a href="lang_vacuum.html">VACUUM</a>. The optimize command
+ essentially has to read and write the entire FTS table, resulting
+ in a large transaction.
+
+</p><p>
+ In batch-mode operation, where an FTS table is initially built up
+ using a large number of INSERT operations, then queried repeatedly
+ without further changes, it is often a good idea
+ to run "optimize" after the last INSERT and before the first query.
+
+<a name="*fts4rebuidcmd"></a>
+
+</p><h2 id="rebuild"><span>7.2. </span>The "rebuild" command</h2>
+
+<p>
+ The "rebuild" command causes SQLite to discard the entire FTS3/4
+ table and then rebuild it again from original text. The concept
+ is similar to <a href="lang_reindex.html">REINDEX</a>, only that it applies to an
+ FTS3/4 table instead of an ordinary index.
+
+</p><p>
+ The "rebuild" command should be run whenever the implementation
+ of a custom tokenizer changes, so that all content can be retokenized.
+ The "rebuild" command is also useful when using the
+ <a href="fts3.html#*fts4content">FTS4 content option</a> after changes have been made to the original
+ content table.
+
+<a name="*fts4ickcmd"></a>
+
+</p><h2 id="integcheck"><span>7.3. </span>The "integrity-check" command</h2>
+
+<p>
+ The "integrity-check" command causes SQLite to read and verify
+ the accuracy of all inverted indices in an FTS3/4 table by comparing
+ those inverted indices against the original content. The
+ "integrity-check" command silently succeeds if the inverted
+ indices are all ok, but will fail with an SQLITE_CORRUPT error
+ if any problems are found.
+
+</p><p>
+ The "integrity-check" command is similar in concept to
+ <a href="pragma.html#pragma_integrity_check">PRAGMA integrity_check</a>. In a working system, the "integrity-command"
+ should always be successful. Possible causes of integrity-check
+ failures include:
+ </p><ul>
+ <li> The application has made changes to the <a href="fts3.html#*shadowtab">FTS shadow tables</a>
+ directly, without using the FTS3/4 virtual table, causing
+ the shadow tables to become out of sync with each other.
+ </li><li> Using the <a href="fts3.html#*fts4content">FTS4 content option</a> and failing to manually keep
+ the content in sync with the FTS4 inverted indices.
+ </li><li> Bugs in the FTS3/4 virtual table. (The "integrity-check"
+ command was original conceived as part of the test suite
+ for FTS3/4.)
+ </li><li> Corruption to the underlying SQLite database file. (See
+ documentation on <a href="howtocorrupt.html">how to corrupt</a> and SQLite database for
+ additional information.)
+ </li></ul>
+
+<a name="*fts4mergecmd"></a>
+
+<h2 id="mergecmd"><span>7.4. </span>The "merge=X,Y" command</h2>
+
+<p>
+ The "merge=X,Y" command (where X and Y are integers) causes SQLite
+ to do a limited amount of work toward merging the various inverted
+ index b-trees of an FTS3/4 table together into one large b-tree.
+ The X value is the target number of "blocks" to be merged, and Y is
+ the minimum number of b-tree segments on a level required before
+ merging will be applied to that level. The value of Y should
+ be between 2 and 16 with a recommended value of 8. The value of X
+ can be any positive integer but values on the order of 100 to 300
+ are recommended.
+
+</p><p>
+ When an FTS table accumulates 16 b-tree segments at the same level,
+ the next INSERT into that table will cause all 16 segments to be
+ merged into a single b-tree segment at the next higher level. The
+ effect of these level merges is that most INSERTs into an FTS table
+ are very fast and take minimal memory, but an occasional INSERT is
+ slow and generates a large transaction because of the need to
+ do merging. This results in "spiky" performance of INSERTs.
+
+</p><p>
+ To avoid spiky INSERT performance, an application can run the
+ "merge=X,Y" command periodically, possibly in an idle thread or
+ idle process, to ensure that the FTS table never accumulates
+ too many b-tree segments at the same level. INSERT performance
+ spikes can generally be avoided, and performance of FTS3/4 can be
+ maximized, by running "merge=X,Y" after every few thousand
+ document inserts. Each "merge=X,Y" command will run in a separate
+ transaction (unless they are grouped together using <a href="lang_transaction.html">BEGIN</a>...<a href="lang_transaction.html">COMMIT</a>,
+ of course). The transactions can be kept small by choosing a value
+ for X in the range of 100 to 300. The idle thread that is running
+ the merge commands can know when it is done by checking the difference
+ in <a href="c3ref/total_changes.html">sqlite3_total_changes()</a> before and after each "merge=X,Y"
+ command and stopping the loop when the difference drops below two.
+
+<a name="*fts4automergecmd"></a>
+
+</p><h2 id="automerge""><span>7.5. </span>The "automerge=N" command</h2>
+
+<p>
+ The "automerge=N" command (where N is an integer between 0 and 15,
+ inclusive) is used to configure an FTS3/4 tables "automerge" parameter,
+ which controls automatic incremental inverted index merging. The default
+ automerge value for new tables is 0, meaning that automatic incremental
+ merging is completely disabled. If the value of the automerge parameter
+ is modified using the "automerge=N" command, the new parameter value is
+ stored persistently in the database and is used by all subsequently
+ established database connections.
+
+</p><p>
+ Setting the automerge parameter to a non-zero value enables automatic
+ incremental merging. This causes SQLite to do a small amount of inverted
+ index merging after every INSERT operation. The amount of merging
+ performed is designed so that the FTS3/4 table never reaches a point
+ where it has 16 segments at the same level and hence has to do a large
+ merge in order to complete an insert. In other words, automatic
+ incremental merging is designed to prevent spiky INSERT performance.
+
+</p><p>
+ The downside of automatic incremental merging is that it makes
+ every INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE operation on an FTS3/4 table run
+ a little slower, since extra time must be used to do the incremental
+ merge. For maximum performance, it is recommended that applications
+ disable automatic incremental merge and instead use the
+ <a href="fts3.html#*fts4mergecmd">"merge" command</a> in an idle process to keep the inverted indices
+ well merged. But if the structure of an application does not easily
+ allow for idle processes, the use of automatic incremental merge is
+ a very reasonable fallback solution.
+
+</p><p>
+ The actual value of the automerge parameter determines the number of
+ index segments merged simultaneously by an automatic inverted index
+ merge. If the value is set to N, the system waits until there are at
+ least N segments on a single level before beginning to incrementally
+ merge them. Setting a lower value of N causes segments to be merged more
+ quickly, which may speed up full-text queries and, if the workload
+ contains UPDATE or DELETE operations as well as INSERTs, reduce the space
+ on disk consumed by the full-text index. However, it also increases the
+ amount of data written to disk.
+
+</p><p>
+ For general use in cases where the workload contains few UPDATE or DELETE
+ operations, a good choice for automerge is 8. If the workload contains
+ many UPDATE or DELETE commands,
+ or if query speed is a concern, it may be advantageous to reduce automerge
+ to 2.
+
+</p><p>
+ For reasons of backwards compatibility, the "automerge=1" command sets
+ the automerge parameter to 8, not 1 (a value of 1 would make no sense
+ anyway, as merging data from a single segment is a no-op).
+
+
+</p><a name="tokenizer"></a>
+<h1 id="tokenizer" tags="tokenizer"><span>8. </span>Tokenizers</h1>
+
+<p>
+ An FTS tokenizer is a set of rules for extracting terms from a document
+ or basic FTS full-text query.
+
+</p><p>
+ Unless a specific tokenizer is specified as part of the CREATE
+ VIRTUAL TABLE statement used to create the FTS table, the default
+ tokenizer, "simple", is used. The simple tokenizer extracts tokens from
+ a document or basic FTS full-text query according to the following
+ rules:
+
+</p><ul>
+ <li><p> A term is a contiguous sequence of eligible characters, where
+ eligible characters are all alphanumeric characters and all characters with
+ Unicode codepoint values greater than or equal to 128.
+ All other characters are
+ discarded when splitting a document into terms. Their only contribution is
+ to separate adjacent terms.
+
+ </p></li><li><p> All uppercase characters within the ASCII range (Unicode codepoints
+ less than 128), are transformed to their lowercase equivalents as part
+ of the tokenization process. Thus, full-text queries are
+ case-insensitive when using the simple tokenizer.
+</p></li></ul>
+
+<p>
+ For example, when a document containing the text "Right now, they're very
+ frustrated.", the terms extracted from the document and added to the
+ full-text index are, in order, "right now they re very frustrated". Such
+ a document would match a full-text query such as "MATCH 'Frustrated'",
+ as the simple tokenizer transforms the term in the query to lowercase
+ before searching the full-text index.
+
+</p><p>
+ As well as the "simple" tokenizer, the FTS source code features a tokenizer
+ that uses the <a href="http://tartarus.org/~martin/PorterStemmer/">Porter
+ Stemming algorithm</a>. This tokenizer uses the same rules to separate
+ the input document into terms including folding all terms into lower case,
+ but also uses the Porter Stemming algorithm to reduce related English language
+ words to a common root. For example, using the same input document as in the
+ paragraph above, the porter tokenizer extracts the following tokens:
+ "right now thei veri frustrat". Even though some of these terms are not even
+ English words, in some cases using them to build the full-text index is more
+ useful than the more intelligible output produced by the simple tokenizer.
+ Using the porter tokenizer, the document not only matches full-text queries
+ such as "MATCH 'Frustrated'", but also queries such as "MATCH 'Frustration'",
+ as the term "Frustration" is reduced by the Porter stemmer algorithm to
+ "frustrat" - just as "Frustrated" is. So, when using the porter tokenizer,
+ FTS is able to find not just exact matches for queried terms, but matches
+ against similar English language terms. For more information on the
+ Porter Stemmer algorithm, please refer to the page linked above.
+
+</p><p>
+ Example illustrating the difference between the "simple" and "porter"
+ tokenizers:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Create a table using the simple tokenizer. Insert a document into it.</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE simple USING fts3(tokenize=simple);
+INSERT INTO simple VALUES('Right now they''re very frustrated');
+
+<i>-- The first of the following two queries matches the document stored in</i>
+<i>-- table "simple". The second does not.</i>
+SELECT * FROM simple WHERE simple MATCH 'Frustrated';
+SELECT * FROM simple WHERE simple MATCH 'Frustration';
+
+<i>-- Create a table using the porter tokenizer. Insert the same document into it</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE porter USING fts3(tokenize=porter);
+INSERT INTO porter VALUES('Right now they''re very frustrated');
+
+<i>-- Both of the following queries match the document stored in table "porter".</i>
+SELECT * FROM porter WHERE porter MATCH 'Frustrated';
+SELECT * FROM porter WHERE porter MATCH 'Frustration';
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ If this extension is compiled with the SQLITE_ENABLE_ICU pre-processor
+ symbol defined, then there exists a built-in tokenizer named "icu"
+ implemented using the ICU library. The first argument passed to the
+ xCreate() method (see fts3_tokenizer.h) of this tokenizer may be
+ an ICU locale identifier. For example "tr_TR" for Turkish as used
+ in Turkey, or "en_AU" for English as used in Australia. For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE thai_text USING fts3(text, tokenize=icu th_TH)
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ The ICU tokenizer implementation is very simple. It splits the input
+ text according to the ICU rules for finding word boundaries and discards
+ any tokens that consist entirely of white-space. This may be suitable
+ for some applications in some locales, but not all. If more complex
+ processing is required, for example to implement stemming or
+ discard punctuation, this can be done by creating a tokenizer
+ implementation that uses the ICU tokenizer as part of its implementation.
+
+<a name="unicode61"></a>
+
+</p><p>
+ The "unicode61" tokenizer is available beginning with SQLite <a href="releaselog/3_7_13.html">version 3.7.13</a>
+ (2012-06-11).
+ Unicode61 works very much like "simple" except that it does simple unicode
+ case folding according to rules in Unicode Version 6.1 and it recognizes
+ unicode space and punctuation characters and uses those to separate tokens.
+ The simple tokenizer only does case folding of ASCII characters and only
+ recognizes ASCII space and punctuation characters as token separators.
+
+</p><p>
+ By default, "unicode61" attempts to remove diacritics from Latin script
+ characters. This behaviour can be overridden by adding the tokenizer argument
+ "remove_diacritics=0". For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Create tables that remove <b>all</b>diacritics from Latin script characters</i>
+<i>-- as part of tokenization.</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE txt1 USING fts4(tokenize=unicode61);
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE txt2 USING fts4(tokenize=unicode61 "remove_diacritics=2");
+
+<i>-- Create a table that does not remove diacritics from Latin script</i>
+<i>-- characters as part of tokenization.</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE txt3 USING fts4(tokenize=unicode61 "remove_diacritics=0");
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>The remove_diacritics option may be set to "0", "1" or "2". The default
+ value is "1". If it is set to "1" or "2", then diacritics are removed from
+ Latin script characters as described above. However, if it is set to "1",
+ then diacritics are not removed in the fairly uncommon case where a single
+ unicode codepoint is used to represent a character with more that one
+ diacritic. For example, diacritics are not removed from codepoint 0x1ED9
+ ("LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH CIRCUMFLEX AND DOT BELOW"). This is technically
+ a bug, but cannot be fixed without creating backwards compatibility
+ problems. If this option is set to "2", then diacritics are correctly
+ removed from all Latin characters.
+
+</p><p>
+ It is also possible to customize the set of codepoints that unicode61 treats
+ as separator characters. The "separators=" option may be used to specify one
+ or more extra characters that should be treated as separator characters, and
+ the "tokenchars=" option may be used to specify one or more extra characters
+ that should be treated as part of tokens instead of as separator characters.
+ For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Create a table that uses the unicode61 tokenizer, but considers "."</i>
+<i>-- and "=" characters to be part of tokens, and capital "X" characters to</i>
+<i>-- function as separators.</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE txt3 USING fts4(tokenize=unicode61 "tokenchars=.=" "separators=X");
+
+<i>-- Create a table that considers space characters (codepoint 32) to be</i>
+<i>-- a token character</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE txt4 USING fts4(tokenize=unicode61 "tokenchars= ");
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ If a character specified as part of the argument to "tokenchars=" is considered
+ to be a token character by default, it is ignored. This is true even if it has
+ been marked as a separator by an earlier "separators=" option. Similarly, if
+ a character specified as part of a "separators=" option is treated as a separator
+ character by default, it is ignored. If multiple "tokenchars=" or "separators="
+ options are specified, all are processed. For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Create a table that uses the unicode61 tokenizer, but considers "."</i>
+<i>-- and "=" characters to be part of tokens, and capital "X" characters to</i>
+<i>-- function as separators. Both of the "tokenchars=" options are processed</i>
+<i>-- The "separators=" option ignores the "." passed to it, as "." is by</i>
+<i>-- default a separator character, even though it has been marked as a token</i>
+<i>-- character by an earlier "tokenchars=" option.</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE txt5 USING fts4(
+ tokenize=unicode61 "tokenchars=." "separators=X." "tokenchars=="
+);
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ The arguments passed to the "tokenchars=" or "separators=" options are
+ case-sensitive. In the example above, specifying that "X" is a separator
+ character does not affect the way "x" is handled.
+
+<a name="f3tknzr"></a>
+
+</p><h2 id="custom_application_defined_tokenizers"><span>8.1. </span>Custom (Application Defined) Tokenizers</h2>
+
+<p>
+ In addition to providing built-in "simple", "porter" and (possibly) "icu" and
+ "unicode61" tokenizers,
+ FTS provides an interface for applications to implement and register custom
+ tokenizers written in C. The interface used to create a new tokenizer is defined
+ and described in the fts3_tokenizer.h source file.
+
+</p><p>
+ Registering a new FTS tokenizer is similar to registering a new
+ virtual table module with SQLite. The user passes a pointer to a
+ structure containing pointers to various callback functions that
+ make up the implementation of the new tokenizer type. For tokenizers,
+ the structure (defined in fts3_tokenizer.h) is called
+ "sqlite3_tokenizer_module".
+
+</p><p>
+ FTS does not expose a C-function that users call to register new
+ tokenizer types with a database handle. Instead, the pointer must
+ be encoded as an SQL blob value and passed to FTS through the SQL
+ engine by evaluating a special scalar function, "fts3_tokenizer()".
+ The fts3_tokenizer() function may be called with one or two arguments,
+ as follows:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>SELECT fts3_tokenizer(&lt;tokenizer-name&gt;);
+SELECT fts3_tokenizer(&lt;tokenizer-name&gt;, &lt;sqlite3_tokenizer_module ptr&gt;);
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ Where &lt;tokenizer-name&gt; is <a href="lang_expr.html#varparam">parameter</a> to which a string is bound using
+ <a href="c3ref/bind_blob.html">sqlite3_bind_text()</a> where the string identifies the tokenizer and
+ &lt;sqlite3_tokenizer_module ptr&gt; is a <a href="lang_expr.html#varparam">parameter</a> to which a BLOB is
+ bound using <a href="c3ref/bind_blob.html">sqlite3_bind_blob()</a> where the value of the BLOB is a
+ pointer to an sqlite3_tokenizer_module structure.
+ If the second argument is present,
+ it is registered as tokenizer &lt;tokenizer-name&gt; and a copy of it
+ returned. If only one argument is passed, a pointer to the tokenizer
+ implementation currently registered as &lt;tokenizer-name&gt; is returned,
+ encoded as a blob. Or, if no such tokenizer exists, an SQL exception
+ (error) is raised.
+
+</p><p>
+ Prior to SQLite <a href="releaselog/3_11_0.html">version 3.11.0</a> (2016-02-15), the arguments to
+ fts3_tokenizer() could be literal strings or BLOBs. They did not have to
+ be <a href="lang_expr.html#varparam">bound parameters</a>. But that could lead to security problems in the
+ event of an SQL injection. Hence, the legacy behavior is now disabled
+ by default. But the old legacy behavior can be enabled, for backwards
+ compatibility in applications that really need it,
+ by calling
+ <a href="c3ref/db_config.html">sqlite3_db_config</a>(db,<a href="c3ref/c_dbconfig_defensive.html#sqlitedbconfigenablefts3tokenizer">SQLITE_DBCONFIG_ENABLE_FTS3_TOKENIZER</a>,1,0).
+
+</p><p>
+ The following block contains an example of calling the fts3_tokenizer()
+ function from C code:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>/*
+** Register a tokenizer implementation with FTS3 or FTS4.
+*/</i>
+int registerTokenizer(
+ sqlite3 *db,
+ char *zName,
+ const sqlite3_tokenizer_module *p
+){
+ int rc;
+ sqlite3_stmt *pStmt;
+ const char *zSql = "SELECT fts3_tokenizer(?1, ?2)";
+
+ rc = sqlite3_prepare_v2(db, zSql, -1, &pStmt, 0);
+ if( rc!=SQLITE_OK ){
+ return rc;
+ }
+
+ sqlite3_bind_text(pStmt, 1, zName, -1, SQLITE_STATIC);
+ sqlite3_bind_blob(pStmt, 2, &p, sizeof(p), SQLITE_STATIC);
+ sqlite3_step(pStmt);
+
+ return sqlite3_finalize(pStmt);
+}
+
+<i>/*
+** Query FTS for the tokenizer implementation named zName.
+*/</i>
+int queryTokenizer(
+ sqlite3 *db,
+ char *zName,
+ const sqlite3_tokenizer_module **pp
+){
+ int rc;
+ sqlite3_stmt *pStmt;
+ const char *zSql = "SELECT fts3_tokenizer(?)";
+
+ *pp = 0;
+ rc = sqlite3_prepare_v2(db, zSql, -1, &pStmt, 0);
+ if( rc!=SQLITE_OK ){
+ return rc;
+ }
+
+ sqlite3_bind_text(pStmt, 1, zName, -1, SQLITE_STATIC);
+ if( SQLITE_ROW==sqlite3_step(pStmt) ){
+ if( sqlite3_column_type(pStmt, 0)==SQLITE_BLOB ){
+ memcpy(pp, sqlite3_column_blob(pStmt, 0), sizeof(*pp));
+ }
+ }
+
+ return sqlite3_finalize(pStmt);
+}
+</pre></div>
+
+
+<a name="fts3tok"></a>
+
+<h2 id="querying_tokenizers"><span>8.2. </span>Querying Tokenizers</h2>
+
+<p>The "fts3tokenize" virtual table can be used to directly access any
+ tokenizer. The following SQL demonstrates how to create an instance
+ of the fts3tokenize virtual table:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE tok1 USING fts3tokenize('porter');
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>The name of the desired tokenizer should be substituted in place of
+ 'porter' in the example, of course. If the tokenizer requires one or
+ more arguments, they should be separated by commas in the fts3tokenize
+ declaration (even though they are separated by spaces in declarations
+ of regular fts4 tables). The following creates fts4 and fts3tokenize
+ tables that use the same tokenizer:
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE text1 USING fts4(tokenize=icu en_AU);
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE tokens1 USING fts3tokenize(icu, en_AU);
+
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE text2 USING fts4(tokenize=unicode61 "tokenchars=@." "separators=123");
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE tokens2 USING fts3tokenize(unicode61, "tokenchars=@.", "separators=123");
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ Once the virtual table is created, it can be queried as follows:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>SELECT token, start, end, position
+ FROM tok1
+ WHERE input='This is a test sentence.';
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>The virtual table will return one row of output for each token in the
+ input string. The "token" column is the text of the token. The "start"
+ and "end" columns are the byte offset to the beginning and end of the
+ token in the original input string.
+ The "position" column is the sequence number
+ of the token in the original input string. There is also an "input"
+ column which is simply a copy of the input string that is specified in
+ the WHERE clause. Note that a constraint of the form "input=?" must
+ appear in the WHERE clause or else the virtual table will have no input
+ to tokenize and will return no rows. The example above generates
+ the following output:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>thi|0|4|0
+is|5|7|1
+a|8|9|2
+test|10|14|3
+sentenc|15|23|4
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>Notice that the tokens in the result set from the fts3tokenize virtual
+ table have been transformed according to the rules of the tokenizer.
+ Since this example used the "porter" tokenizer, the "This" token was
+ converted into "thi". If the original text of the token is desired,
+ it can be retrieved using the "start" and "end" columns with the
+ <a href="lang_corefunc.html#substr">substr()</a> function. For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>SELECT substr(input, start+1, end-start), token, position
+ FROM tok1
+ WHERE input='This is a test sentence.';
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>The fts3tokenize virtual table can be used on any tokenizer, regardless
+ of whether or not there exists an FTS3 or FTS4 table that actually uses
+ that tokenizer.
+
+
+</p><a name="data_structures"></a>
+<h1 tags="segment btree" id="data_structures"><span>9. </span>Data Structures</h1>
+
+<p>
+ This section describes at a high-level the way the FTS module stores its
+ index and content in the database. It is <b>not necessary to read or
+ understand the material in this section in order to use FTS</b> in an
+ application. However, it may be useful to application developers attempting
+ to analyze and understand FTS performance characteristics, or to developers
+ contemplating enhancements to the existing FTS feature set.
+</p>
+
+<a name="*shadowtab"></a>
+
+<a name="shadow_tables"></a>
+<h2 tags="shadowtabs" id="shadow_tables"><span>9.1. </span>Shadow Tables</h2>
+<p>
+ For each FTS virtual table in a database, three to five real (non-virtual) tables
+ are created to store the underlying data. These real tables are called "shadow tables".
+ The real tables are named "%_content",
+ "%_segdir", "%_segments", "%_stat", and "%_docsize", where "%" is replaced by the name
+ of the FTS virtual table.
+
+</p><p>
+ The leftmost column of the "%_content" table is an INTEGER PRIMARY KEY field
+ named "docid". Following this is one column for each column of the FTS
+ virtual table as declared by the user, named by prepending the column name
+ supplied by the user with "c<i>N</i>", where <i>N</i> is the index of the
+ column within the table, numbered from left to right starting with 0. Data
+ types supplied as part of the virtual table declaration are not used as
+ part of the %_content table declaration. For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- Virtual table declaration</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE abc USING fts4(a NUMBER, b TEXT, c);
+
+<i>-- Corresponding %_content table declaration</i>
+CREATE TABLE abc_content(docid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, c0a, c1b, c2c);
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ The %_content table contains the unadulterated data inserted by the user
+ into the FTS virtual table by the user. If the user does not explicitly
+ supply a "docid" value when inserting records, one is selected automatically
+ by the system.
+
+</p><p>
+ The %_stat and %_docsize tables are only created if the FTS table uses the
+ FTS4 module, not FTS3. Furthermore, the %_docsize table is omitted if the
+ FTS4 table is created with the <a href="fts3.html#fts4matchinfo">"matchinfo=fts3"</a> directive
+ specified as part of the CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE statement. If they are created,
+ the schema of the two tables is as follows:
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>CREATE TABLE %_stat(
+ id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
+ value BLOB
+);
+
+CREATE TABLE %_docsize(
+ docid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
+ size BLOB
+);
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ For each row in the FTS table, the %_docsize table contains a corresponding
+ row with the same "docid" value. The "size" field contains a blob consisting
+ of <i>N</i> FTS varints, where <i>N</i> is the number of user-defined columns
+ in the table. Each varint in the "size" blob is the number of tokens in the
+ corresponding column of the associated row in the FTS table. The %_stat table
+ always contains a single row with the "id" column set to 0. The "value"
+ column contains a blob consisting of <i>N+1</i> FTS varints, where <i>N</i>
+ is again the number of user-defined columns in the FTS table. The first
+ varint in the blob is set to the total number of rows in the FTS table. The
+ second and subsequent varints contain the total number of tokens stored in
+ the corresponding column for all rows of the FTS table.
+
+</p><p>
+ The two remaining tables, %_segments and %_segdir, are used to store the
+ full-text index. Conceptually, this index is a lookup table that maps each
+ term (word) to the set of docid values corresponding to records in the
+ %_content table that contain one or more occurrences of the term. To
+ retrieve all documents that contain a specified term, the FTS module
+ queries this index to determine the set of docid values for records that
+ contain the term, then retrieves the required documents from the %_content
+ table. Regardless of the schema of the FTS virtual table, the %_segments
+ and %_segdir tables are always created as follows:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>CREATE TABLE %_segments(
+ blockid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, <i>-- B-tree node id</i>
+ block blob <i>-- B-tree node data</i>
+);
+
+CREATE TABLE %_segdir(
+ level INTEGER,
+ idx INTEGER,
+ start_block INTEGER, <i>-- Blockid of first node in %_segments</i>
+ leaves_end_block INTEGER, <i>-- Blockid of last leaf node in %_segments</i>
+ end_block INTEGER, <i>-- Blockid of last node in %_segments</i>
+ root BLOB, <i>-- B-tree root node</i>
+ PRIMARY KEY(level, idx)
+);
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ The schema depicted above is not designed to store the full-text index
+ directly. Instead, it is used to store one or more b-tree structures. There
+ is one b-tree for each row in the %_segdir table. The %_segdir table
+ row contains the root node and various meta-data associated with the
+ b-tree structure, and the %_segments table contains all other (non-root)
+ b-tree nodes. Each b-tree is referred to as a "segment". Once it has
+ been created, a segment b-tree is never updated (although it may be
+ deleted altogether).
+
+</p><p>
+ The keys used by each segment b-tree are terms (words). As well as the
+ key, each segment b-tree entry has an associated "doclist" (document list).
+ A doclist consists of zero or more entries, where each entry consists of:
+
+</p><ul>
+ <li> A docid (document id), and
+ </li><li> A list of term offsets, one for each occurrence of the term within
+ the document. A term offset indicates the number of tokens (words)
+ that occur before the term in question, not the number of characters
+ or bytes. For example, the term offset of the term "war" in the
+ phrase "Ancestral voices prophesying war!" is 3.
+</li></ul>
+
+<p>
+ Entries within a doclist are sorted by docid. Positions within a doclist
+ entry are stored in ascending order.
+
+</p><p>
+ The contents of the logical full-text index is found by merging the
+ contents of all segment b-trees. If a term is present in more than one
+ segment b-tree, then it maps to the union of each individual doclist. If,
+ for a single term, the same docid occurs in more than one doclist, then only
+ the doclist that is part of the most recently created segment b-tree is
+ considered valid.
+
+</p><p>
+ Multiple b-tree structures are used instead of a single b-tree to reduce
+ the cost of inserting records into FTS tables. When a new record is
+ inserted into an FTS table that already contains a lot of data, it is
+ likely that many of the terms in the new record are already present in
+ a large number of existing records. If a single b-tree were used, then
+ large doclist structures would have to be loaded from the database,
+ amended to include the new docid and term-offset list, then written back
+ to the database. Using multiple b-tree tables allows this to be avoided
+ by creating a new b-tree which can be merged with the existing b-tree
+ (or b-trees) later on. Merging of b-tree structures can be performed as
+ a background task, or once a certain number of separate b-tree structures
+ have been accumulated. Of course, this scheme makes queries more expensive
+ (as the FTS code may have to look up individual terms in more than one
+ b-tree and merge the results), but it has been found that in practice this
+ overhead is often negligible.
+
+</p><h2 id="variable_length_integer_varint_format"><span>9.2. </span>Variable Length Integer (varint) Format</h2>
+
+<p>
+ Integer values stored as part of segment b-tree nodes are encoded using the
+ FTS varint format. This encoding is similar, but <b>not identical</b>, to
+ the <a href="fileformat.html#varint_format">SQLite varint format</a>.
+
+</p><p>
+ An encoded FTS varint consumes between one and ten bytes of space. The
+ number of bytes required is determined by the sign and magnitude of the
+ integer value encoded. More accurately, the number of bytes used to store
+ the encoded integer depends on the position of the most significant set bit
+ in the 64-bit twos-complement representation of the integer value. Negative
+ values always have the most significant bit set (the sign bit), and so are
+ always stored using the full ten bytes. Positive integer values may be
+ stored using less space.
+
+</p><p>
+ The final byte of an encoded FTS varint has its most significant bit
+ cleared. All preceding bytes have the most significant bit set. Data
+ is stored in the remaining seven least significant bits of each byte.
+ The first byte of the encoded representation contains the least significant
+ seven bits of the encoded integer value. The second byte of the encoded
+ representation, if it is present, contains the seven next least significant
+ bits of the integer value, and so on. The following table contains examples
+ of encoded integer values:
+
+</p><table striped="1" style="margin:1em auto; width:80%; border-spacing:0">
+ <tr style="text-align:left"><th>Decimal</th><th>Hexadecimal</th><th width="100%">Encoded Representation
+ </th></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>43</td><td>0x000000000000002B</td><td>0x2B
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>200815</td><td>0x000000000003106F</td><td>0xEF 0xA0 0x0C
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>-1</td><td>0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF</td><td>0xFF 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF 0x01
+</td></tr></table>
+
+
+<h2 id="segment_b_tree_format"><span>9.3. </span>Segment B-Tree Format</h2>
+
+<p>
+ Segment b-trees are prefix-compressed b+-trees. There is one segment b-tree
+ for each row in the %_segdir table (see above). The root node of the segment
+ b-tree is stored as a blob in the "root" field of the corresponding row
+ of the %_segdir table. All other nodes (if any exist) are stored in the
+ "blob" column of the %_segments table. Nodes within the %_segments table are
+ identified by the integer value in the blockid field of the corresponding
+ row. The following table describes the fields of the %_segdir table:
+
+</p><table striped="1" style="margin:1em auto; width:80%; border-spacing:0">
+ <tr style="text-align:left"><th>Column </th><th width="100%">Interpretation
+ </th></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>level </td><td>
+ Between them, the contents of the "level" and "idx" fields define the
+ relative age of the segment b-tree. The smaller the value stored in the
+ "level" field, the more recently the segment b-tree was created. If two
+ segment b-trees are of the same "level", the segment with the larger
+ value stored in the "idx" column is more recent. The PRIMARY KEY constraint
+ on the %_segdir table prevents any two segments from having the same value
+ for both the "level" and "idx" fields.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>idx </td><td> See above.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>start_block </td><td>
+ The blockid that corresponds to the node with the smallest blockid that
+ belongs to this segment b-tree. Or zero if the entire segment b-tree
+ fits on the root node. If it exists, this node is always a leaf node.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>leaves_end_block </td><td>
+ The blockid that corresponds to the leaf node with the largest blockid
+ that belongs to this segment b-tree. Or zero if the entire segment b-tree
+ fits on the root node.
+ </td></tr><tr style="text-align:left;background-color:#DDDDDD"><td>end_block </td><td>
+ This field may contain either an integer or a text field consisting of
+ two integers separated by a space character (unicode codepoint 0x20).
+<p style="margin-left:0;margin-right:0">
+ The first, or only, integer is the blockid that corresponds to the interior
+ node with the largest blockid that belongs to this segment b-tree. Or zero
+ if the entire segment b-tree fits on the root node. If it exists, this node
+ is always an interior node.
+</p><p style="margin-left:0;margin-right:0;margin-bottom:0">
+ The second integer, if it is present, is the aggregate size of all data
+ stored on leaf pages in bytes. If the value is negative, then the segment
+ is the output of an unfinished incremental-merge operation, and the
+ absolute value is current size in bytes.
+
+ </p></td></tr><tr style="text-align:left"><td>root </td><td>
+ Blob containing the root node of the segment b-tree.
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>
+ Apart from the root node, the nodes that make up a single segment b-tree are
+ always stored using a contiguous sequence of blockids. Furthermore, the
+ nodes that make up a single level of the b-tree are themselves stored as
+ a contiguous block, in b-tree order. The contiguous sequence of blockids
+ used to store the b-tree leaves are allocated starting with the blockid
+ value stored in the "start_block" column of the corresponding %_segdir row,
+ and finishing at the blockid value stored in the "leaves_end_block"
+ field of the same row. It is therefore possible to iterate through all the
+ leaves of a segment b-tree, in key order, by traversing the %_segments
+ table in blockid order from "start_block" to "leaves_end_block".
+
+</p><h3 id="segment_b_tree_leaf_nodes"><span>9.3.1. </span>Segment B-Tree Leaf Nodes</h3>
+
+<p>
+ The following diagram depicts the format of a segment b-tree leaf node.
+
+</p><center>
+ <img src="images/fts3_leaf_node.png">
+ <p> Segment B-Tree Leaf Node Format
+</p></center>
+
+<p>
+ The first term stored on each node ("Term 1" in the figure above) is
+ stored verbatim. Each subsequent term is prefix-compressed with respect
+ to its predecessor. Terms are stored within a page in sorted (memcmp)
+ order.
+
+</p><h3 id="segment_b_tree_interior_nodes"><span>9.3.2. </span>Segment B-Tree Interior Nodes</h3>
+
+<p>
+ The following diagram depicts the format of a segment b-tree interior
+ (non-leaf) node.
+
+</p><center>
+ <img src="images/fts3_interior_node.png">
+ <p> Segment B-Tree Interior Node Format
+</p></center>
+
+
+<h2 id="doclist_format"><span>9.4. </span>Doclist Format</h2>
+
+<p>
+ A doclist consists of an array of 64-bit signed integers, serialized using
+ the FTS varint format. Each doclist entry is made up of a series of two
+ or more integers, as follows:
+
+</p><ol>
+ <li> The docid value. The first entry in a doclist contains the literal docid
+ value. The first field of each subsequent doclist entry contains the
+ difference between the new docid and the previous one (always a positive
+ number).
+ </li><li> Zero or more term-offset lists. A term-offset list is present for each
+ column of the FTS virtual table that contains the term. A term-offset
+ list consists of the following:
+ <ol>
+ <li> Constant value 1. This field is omitted for any term-offset list
+ associated with column 0.
+ </li><li> The column number (1 for the second leftmost column, etc.). This
+ field is omitted for any term-offset list associated with column 0.
+ </li><li> A list of term-offsets, sorted from smallest to largest. Instead
+ of storing the term-offset value literally, each integer stored
+ is the difference between the current term-offset and the previous
+ one (or zero if the current term-offset is the first), plus 2.
+ </li></ol>
+ </li><li> Constant value 0.
+</li></ol>
+
+<center>
+ <img src="images/fts3_doclist2.png">
+ <p> FTS3 Doclist Format
+</p></center>
+
+<center>
+ <img src="images/fts3_doclist.png">
+ <p> FTS Doclist Entry Format
+</p></center>
+
+<p>
+ For doclists for which the term appears in more than one column of the FTS
+ virtual table, term-offset lists within the doclist are stored in column
+ number order. This ensures that the term-offset list associated with
+ column 0 (if any) is always first, allowing the first two fields of the
+ term-offset list to be omitted in this case.
+
+</p><a name="limitations"></a>
+<h1 tags="bugs" id="limitations"><span>10. </span>Limitations</h1>
+
+<h2 id="_utf_16_byte_order_mark_problem_"><span>10.1. </span> UTF-16 byte-order-mark problem </h2>
+
+For UTF-16 databases, when using the "simple" tokenizer, it is possible to use
+malformed unicode strings to cause the
+<a href="#integcheck">integrity-check special command</a> to falsely report
+corruption, or for <a href="#snippet">auxiliary functions</a> to return
+incorrect results. More specifically, the bug can be triggered by any of the following:
+
+<ul>
+ <li><p>A UTF-16 byte-order-mark (BOM) is embedded at the beginning of an SQL string
+ literal value inserted into an FTS3 table. For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>INSERT INTO fts_table(col) VALUES(char(0xfeff)||'text...');
+</pre></div>
+
+ </li><li><p>Malformed UTF-8 that SQLite converts to a UTF-16 byte-order-mark is
+ embedded at the beginning of an SQL string literal value inserted
+ into an FTS3 table.
+
+ </p></li><li><p>A text value created by casting a blob that begins with the two
+ bytes 0xFF and 0xFE, in either possible order, is inserted into an
+ FTS3 table. For example:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>INSERT INTO fts_table(col) VALUES(CAST(X'FEFF' AS TEXT));
+</pre></div>
+</li></ul>
+
+Everything works correctly if any of the following are true:
+<ul>
+<li> The <a href="pragma.html#pragma_encoding">database encoding</a> is UTF-8.
+</li><li> All text strings are insert using one of the
+ <a href="c3ref/bind_blob.html">sqlite3_bind_text()</a> family of functions.
+</li><li> Literal strings contain no byte-order-marks.
+</li><li> A tokenizer is used that recognizes byte-order-marks
+ as whitespace. (The default "simple" tokenizer for
+ FTS3/4 does not think that BOMs are whitespace, but
+ the unicode tokenizer does.)
+</li></ul>
+All of the above conditions must be false in order for problems
+to occur. And even if all of the conditiona above are false,
+most things will still operator correctly. Only the
+<a href="#integcheck">integrity-check</a> command and the
+<a href="#snippet">auxiliary functions</a> might given
+unexpected results.
+
+<a name="appendix_a"></a>
+<h1 id="appendix_a" nonumber="1" tags="search application tips">
+ Appendix A: Search Application Tips
+</h1>
+
+<p>
+ FTS is primarily designed to support Boolean full-text queries - queries
+ to find the set of documents that match a specified criteria. However, many
+ (most?) search applications require that results are somehow ranked in order
+ of "relevance", where "relevance" is defined as the likelihood that the user
+ who performed the search is interested in a specific element of the returned
+ set of documents. When using a search engine to find documents on the world
+ wide web, the user expects that the most useful, or "relevant", documents
+ will be returned as the first page of results, and that each subsequent page
+ contains progressively less relevant results. Exactly how a machine can
+ determine document relevance based on a users query is a complicated problem
+ and the subject of much ongoing research.
+
+</p><p>
+ One very simple scheme might be to count the number of instances of the
+ users search terms in each result document. Those documents that contain
+ many instances of the terms are considered more relevant than those with
+ a small number of instances of each term. In an FTS application, the
+ number of term instances in each result could be determined by counting
+ the number of integers in the return value of the <a href="fts3.html#offsets">offsets</a> function.
+ The following example shows a query that could be used to obtain the
+ ten most relevant results for a query entered by the user:
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- This example (and all others in this section) assumes the following schema</i>
+CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE documents USING fts3(title, content);
+
+<i>-- Assuming the application has supplied an SQLite user function named "countintegers"</i>
+<i>-- that returns the number of space-separated integers contained in its only argument,</i>
+<i>-- the following query could be used to return the titles of the 10 documents that contain</i>
+<i>-- the greatest number of instances of the users query terms. Hopefully, these 10</i>
+<i>-- documents will be those that the users considers more or less the most "relevant".</i>
+SELECT title FROM documents
+ WHERE documents MATCH &lt;query&gt;
+ ORDER BY countintegers(offsets(documents)) DESC
+ LIMIT 10 OFFSET 0
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ The query above could be made to run faster by using the FTS <a href="fts3.html#matchinfo">matchinfo</a>
+ function to determine the number of query term instances that appear in each
+ result. The matchinfo function is much more efficient than the offsets
+ function. Furthermore, the matchinfo function provides extra information
+ regarding the overall number of occurrences of each query term in the entire
+ document set (not just the current row) and the number of documents in which
+ each query term appears. This may be used (for example) to attach a higher
+ weight to less common terms which may increase the overall computed relevancy
+ of those results the user considers more interesting.
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- If the application supplies an SQLite user function called "rank" that</i>
+<i>-- interprets the blob of data returned by matchinfo and returns a numeric</i>
+<i>-- relevancy based on it, then the following SQL may be used to return the</i>
+<i>-- titles of the 10 most relevant documents in the dataset for a users query.</i>
+SELECT title FROM documents
+ WHERE documents MATCH &lt;query&gt;
+ ORDER BY rank(matchinfo(documents)) DESC
+ LIMIT 10 OFFSET 0
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ The SQL query in the example above uses less CPU than the first example
+ in this section, but still has a non-obvious performance problem. SQLite
+ satisfies this query by retrieving the value of the "title" column and
+ matchinfo data from the FTS module for every row matched by the users
+ query before it sorts and limits the results. Because of the way SQLite's
+ virtual table interface works, retrieving the value of the "title" column
+ requires loading the entire row from disk (including the "content" field,
+ which may be quite large). This means that if the users query matches
+ several thousand documents, many megabytes of "title" and "content" data
+ may be loaded from disk into memory even though they will never be used
+ for any purpose.
+
+</p><p>
+ The SQL query in the following example block is one solution to this
+ problem. In SQLite, when a <a href="optoverview.html#flattening">sub-query
+ used in a join contains a LIMIT clause</a>, the results of the sub-query are
+ calculated and stored in temporary table before the main query is executed.
+ This means that SQLite will load only the docid and matchinfo data for each
+ row matching the users query into memory, determine the docid values
+ corresponding to the ten most relevant documents, then load only the title
+ and content information for those 10 documents only. Because both the matchinfo
+ and docid values are gleaned entirely from the full-text index, this results
+ in dramatically less data being loaded from the database into memory.
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre>SELECT title FROM documents JOIN (
+ SELECT docid, rank(matchinfo(documents)) AS rank
+ FROM documents
+ WHERE documents MATCH &lt;query&gt;
+ ORDER BY rank DESC
+ LIMIT 10 OFFSET 0
+) AS ranktable USING(docid)
+ORDER BY ranktable.rank DESC
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ The next block of SQL enhances the query with solutions to two other problems
+ that may arise in developing search applications using FTS:
+
+</p><ol>
+ <li> <p>
+ The <a href="fts3.html#snippet">snippet</a> function cannot be used with the above query. Because
+ the outer query does not include a "WHERE ... MATCH" clause, the snippet
+ function may not be used with it. One solution is to duplicate the WHERE
+ clause used by the sub-query in the outer query. The overhead associated
+ with this is usually negligible.
+ </p></li><li> <p>
+ The relevancy of a document may depend on something other than just
+ the data available in the return value of matchinfo. For example
+ each document in the database may be assigned a static weight based
+ on factors unrelated to its content (origin, author, age, number
+ of references etc.). These values can be stored by the application
+ in a separate table that can be joined against the documents table
+ in the sub-query so that the rank function may access them.
+</p></li></ol>
+
+<p>
+ This version of the query is very similar to that used by the
+ <a href="http://www.sqlite.org/search?q=fts3">sqlite.org documentation search</a>
+ application.
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>-- This table stores the static weight assigned to each document in FTS table</i>
+<i>-- "documents". For each row in the documents table there is a corresponding row</i>
+<i>-- with the same docid value in this table.</i>
+CREATE TABLE documents_data(docid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, weight);
+
+<i>-- This query is similar to the one in the block above, except that:</i>
+<i>--</i>
+<i>-- 1. It returns a "snippet" of text along with the document title for display. So</i>
+<i>-- that the snippet function may be used, the "WHERE ... MATCH ..." clause from</i>
+<i>-- the sub-query is duplicated in the outer query.</i>
+<i>--</i>
+<i>-- 2. The sub-query joins the documents table with the document_data table, so that</i>
+<i>-- implementation of the rank function has access to the static weight assigned</i>
+<i>-- to each document.</i>
+SELECT title, snippet(documents) FROM documents JOIN (
+ SELECT docid, rank(matchinfo(documents), documents_data.weight) AS rank
+ FROM documents JOIN documents_data USING(docid)
+ WHERE documents MATCH &lt;query&gt;
+ ORDER BY rank DESC
+ LIMIT 10 OFFSET 0
+) AS ranktable USING(docid)
+WHERE documents MATCH &lt;query&gt;
+ORDER BY ranktable.rank DESC
+</pre></div>
+
+<p>
+ All the example queries above return the ten most relevant query results.
+ By modifying the values used with the OFFSET and LIMIT clauses, a query
+ to return (say) the next ten most relevant results is easy to construct.
+ This may be used to obtain the data required for a search applications second
+ and subsequent pages of results.
+
+</p><p>
+ The next block contains an example rank function that uses matchinfo data
+ implemented in C. Instead of a single weight, it allows a weight to be
+ externally assigned to each column of each document. It may be registered
+ with SQLite like any other user function using <a href="c3ref/create_function.html">sqlite3_create_function</a>.
+
+</p><p><b> Security Warning:</b> Because it is just an ordinary SQL function,
+ rank() may be invoked as part of any SQL query in any context. This means
+ that the first argument passed may not be a valid matchinfo blob.
+ Implementors should take care to handle this case without causing buffer
+ overruns or other potential security problems.
+
+</p><div class="codeblock"><pre><i>/*</i>
+<i>** SQLite user defined function to use with matchinfo() to calculate the</i>
+<i>** relevancy of an FTS match. The value returned is the relevancy score</i>
+<i>** (a real value greater than or equal to zero). A larger value indicates </i>
+<i>** a more relevant document.</i>
+<i>**</i>
+<i>** The overall relevancy returned is the sum of the relevancies of each </i>
+<i>** column value in the FTS table. The relevancy of a column value is the</i>
+<i>** sum of the following for each reportable phrase in the FTS query:</i>
+<i>**</i>
+<i>** (&lt;hit count&gt; / &lt;global hit count&gt;) * &lt;column weight&gt;</i>
+<i>**</i>
+<i>** where &lt;hit count&gt; is the number of instances of the phrase in the</i>
+<i>** column value of the current row and &lt;global hit count&gt; is the number</i>
+<i>** of instances of the phrase in the same column of all rows in the FTS</i>
+<i>** table. The &lt;column weight&gt; is a weighting factor assigned to each</i>
+<i>** column by the caller (see below).</i>
+<i>**</i>
+<i>** The first argument to this function must be the return value of the FTS </i>
+<i>** matchinfo() function. Following this must be one argument for each column </i>
+<i>** of the FTS table containing a numeric weight factor for the corresponding </i>
+<i>** column. Example:</i>
+<i>**</i>
+<i>** CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE documents USING fts3(title, content)</i>
+<i>**</i>
+<i>** The following query returns the docids of documents that match the full-text</i>
+<i>** query &lt;query&gt; sorted from most to least relevant. When calculating</i>
+<i>** relevance, query term instances in the 'title' column are given twice the</i>
+<i>** weighting of those in the 'content' column.</i>
+<i>**</i>
+<i>** SELECT docid FROM documents </i>
+<i>** WHERE documents MATCH &lt;query&gt; </i>
+<i>** ORDER BY rank(matchinfo(documents), 1.0, 0.5) DESC</i>
+<i>*/</i>
+static void rankfunc(sqlite3_context *pCtx, int nVal, sqlite3_value **apVal){
+ int *aMatchinfo; <i>/* Return value of matchinfo() */</i>
+ int nMatchinfo; <i>/* Number of elements in aMatchinfo&#x5B;&#x5D; */</i>
+ int nCol = 0; <i>/* Number of columns in the table */</i>
+ int nPhrase = 0; <i>/* Number of phrases in the query */</i>
+ int iPhrase; <i>/* Current phrase */</i>
+ double score = 0.0; <i>/* Value to return */</i>
+
+ assert( sizeof(int)==4 );
+
+<i> /* Check that the number of arguments passed to this function is correct.</i>
+<i> ** If not, jump to wrong_number_args. Set aMatchinfo to point to the array</i>
+<i> ** of unsigned integer values returned by FTS function matchinfo. Set</i>
+<i> ** nPhrase to contain the number of reportable phrases in the users full-text</i>
+<i> ** query, and nCol to the number of columns in the table. Then check that the</i>
+<i> ** size of the matchinfo blob is as expected. Return an error if it is not.</i>
+<i> */</i>
+ if( nVal&lt;1 ) goto wrong_number_args;
+ aMatchinfo = (unsigned int *)sqlite3_value_blob(apVal&#x5B;0&#x5D;);
+ nMatchinfo = sqlite3_value_bytes(apVal&#x5B;0&#x5D;) / sizeof(int);
+ if( nMatchinfo&gt;=2 ){
+ nPhrase = aMatchinfo&#x5B;0&#x5D;;
+ nCol = aMatchinfo&#x5B;1&#x5D;;
+ }
+ if( nMatchinfo!=(2+3*nCol*nPhrase) ){
+ sqlite3_result_error(pCtx,
+ "invalid matchinfo blob passed to function rank()", -1);
+ return;
+ }
+ if( nVal!=(1+nCol) ) goto wrong_number_args;
+
+<i> /* Iterate through each phrase in the users query. */</i>
+ for(iPhrase=0; iPhrase&lt;nPhrase; iPhrase++){
+ int iCol; <i>/* Current column */</i>
+
+<i> /* Now iterate through each column in the users query. For each column,</i>
+<i> ** increment the relevancy score by:</i>
+<i> **</i>
+<i> ** (&lt;hit count&gt; / &lt;global hit count&gt;) * &lt;column weight&gt;</i>
+<i> **</i>
+<i> ** aPhraseinfo&#x5B;&#x5D; points to the start of the data for phrase iPhrase. So</i>
+<i> ** the hit count and global hit counts for each column are found in </i>
+<i> ** aPhraseinfo&#x5B;iCol*3&#x5D; and aPhraseinfo&#x5B;iCol*3+1&#x5D;, respectively.</i>
+<i> */</i>
+ int *aPhraseinfo = &aMatchinfo&#x5B;2 + iPhrase*nCol*3&#x5D;;
+ for(iCol=0; iCol&lt;nCol; iCol++){
+ int nHitCount = aPhraseinfo&#x5B;3*iCol&#x5D;;
+ int nGlobalHitCount = aPhraseinfo&#x5B;3*iCol+1&#x5D;;
+ double weight = sqlite3_value_double(apVal&#x5B;iCol+1&#x5D;);
+ if( nHitCount>0 ){
+ score += ((double)nHitCount / (double)nGlobalHitCount) * weight;
+ }
+ }
+ }
+
+ sqlite3_result_double(pCtx, score);
+ return;
+
+<i> /* Jump here if the wrong number of arguments are passed to this function */</i>
+wrong_number_args:
+ sqlite3_result_error(pCtx, "wrong number of arguments to function rank()", -1);
+}
+</pre></div>
+</integer></language-id><p align="center"><small><i>This page last modified on <a href="https://sqlite.org/docsrc/honeypot" id="mtimelink" data-href="https://sqlite.org/docsrc/finfo/pages/fts3.in?m=8a8aa7fb8b4ab5e5a">2022-08-10 18:11:15</a> UTC </small></i></p>
+