Creating custom smart search analyzers

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If the selection of built‑in indexing analyzers is insufficient, you can specify custom‑written or third‑party analyzers for search indexes. Custom analyzers allow you to perform text tokenization according to any requirements. You can use custom analyzers with any type of smart search index.

To use a custom analyzer, you need to create and add the appropriate code files to your web project. Classes defining custom analyzers must:

  • inherit from the Lucene.Net.Analysis.Analyzer class
  • implement the CMS.Search.ISearchAnalyzer interface

Example

The following example demonstrates how to assign a custom analyzer to a smart search index. The sample analyzer divides text into tokens at non-letter characters and is case insensitive.

Adding the custom analyzer project

  1. Copy the CustomSearchAnalyzer project from your Kentico installation directory (by default C:\Program Files\Kentico\<version>\CodeSamples\CustomSearchAnalyzer) to a development folder.

  2. Open your Kentico web project using the WebSite.sln file (WebApp.sln if you installed the project as a web application).

  3. Click File -> Add -> Existing Project and select the CustomSearchAnalyzer.csproj file in the folder where you copied the CustomSearchAnalyzer project.

  4. Right‑click the Kentico website in the Solution explorer (or the CMSApp project if your installation is a web application) and choose Add Reference.

  5. Switch to the Solution -> Projects tab, select the CustomSearchAnalyzer project and click OK to add the project reference.

  6. Unfold the References section of the CustomSearchAnalyzer project and delete all invalid references.

  7. Right-click the CustomSearchAnalyzer project and select Add Reference.

  8. Open the Browse tab of the Reference Manager dialog, click Browse,  and navigate to the Lib folder of your Kentico web project on the disk.

  9. Add a reference to the following libraries:

    • CMS.Search.dll
    • Lucene.Net.v3.dll

  10. If you are using a .NET 4.5 project, right click the CustomSearchAnalyzer project, select Properties and set the Target framework to .NET Framework 4.5.

  11. Rebuild the CustomSearchAnalyzer project (Build the entire solution on web application projects).

Assigning the custom analyzer to a search index

  1. Log in to the Kentico administration interface and open the Smart search application.

  2. Click New Index. Fill in the following properties:

    • Display name: Space analyzer document index
    • Index type: Documents
    • Analyzer type: Custom
    • Analyzer class - Assembly name: CMS.CustomSearchAnalyzer
    • Analyzer class - Class: CMS.CustomSearchAnalyzer.CustomSearchAnalyzer

  3. Click Save.

  4. Switch to the Indexed content tab and click Add allowed content.

  5. Type /% into the Path field to index all documents and click Save.

  6. Switch over to the Cultures tab and add the cultures used by your website.

  7. Go to the General tab and Rebuild the index.

You can test the index and its analyzer by switching to the Search preview tab and searching for words from the content of the website’s documents.

Defining custom analyzers in App_Code

If you do not wish to add a new project to the application, you may alternatively create the required classes under the App_Code folder, and register the custom analyzer class using the same approach described in Creating custom smart search indexes.

In this case, you need to change the Assembly name and Class of the index’s analyzer accordingly.