/codeu_project

Primary LanguageJava

Wikipedia Search Engine: CodeU Final Project

We built a search engine. Here's our design doc, and here's our presentation.

Usage

Here's a screencap of the expected output. Screencap showing expected usage.

Command Syntax

When in the javac-lab12 directory, queries can be made to the interface by

$ ant build
$ ant QueryHandler -Dquery="[query]"

Make sure that you're using -Dquery and not DQuery! The build.xml is case-sensitive.

Query Syntax

Queries are read in CNF (conjunctive normal form), with the following requirements:

  • Currently, multi-word queries are not accepted.
  • The tokens "AND" and "OR" are used to separate terms.
  • Open and closed parentheses MUST be separated with spaces!
  • Single word queries do not need parentheses. However, multi-value queries will require parentheses.

Here are some acceptable queries:

java
( java )
( java AND programming )
( java AND programming ) OR ( language )
( java and programming ) OR ( java and language )

Here are some unacceptable queries:

java AND                [1]
(java AND programming)  [2]
java AND programming    [3]
(java OR programming)   [4]

Why?

  1. The "AND" token is not used to separate terms.
  2. The open/closed parentheses are not separated by spaces.
  3. No parentheses are used in a multi-term query.
  4. This is not correct CNF-notation.

Future Steps

For the interface specifically, we hope to eventually do the following:

  1. Implement a more sophisticated DFA token parser so there are less requirements on the syntax of input parameters.
  2. Allow flags (for example, --show-urls or --disable-browser) that control program execution.
  3. Design a way for multiple queries to be handled without exiting the program.

Issues and pull requests are welcome.