Sphinx search gives no results - search

Question

I have a new index on a new table which is not returning any results. This is very odd, and I've never run into this problem before. Other indices (which are built almost identically) are searchable just fine from the search CLI and my API.
Here's my conf file
source topicalindex
{
type = pgsql
sql_host = localhost
sql_user = user
sql_pass = password
sql_db = db
sql_port = 5432 # optional, default is 3306
sql_query = SELECT id, topic, reference, start_ref, end_ref, see_also_html FROM my_topicalindex
sql_attr_uint = topic
sql_attr_uint = reference
}
index topicalindex_index
{
source = topicalindex
path = /path/to/data/topical_index
docinfo = extern
charset_type = utf-8
}
indexer
{
mem_limit = 32M
}
searchd
{
listen = 3312
log = /path/to/searchd.log
query_log = /path/to/query.log
read_timeout = 5
max_children = 30
pid_file = /usr/local/var/searchd.pid
max_matches = 30000
seamless_rotate = 1
preopen_indexes = 0
unlink_old = 1
}
Here's a excerpt proving there's content in the DB
[myself]:myapp(master)$ psql -d mydb -h localhost
psql (9.2.2)
Type "help" for help.
esv=# SELECT * FROM my_topicalindex LIMIT 1;
id | topic | reference | start_ref | end_ref | see_also_html
------+---------+--------------------+-----------+---------+---------------
2810 | Abraham | Genesis chs. 11–25 | 1011001 | 1025034 | blank
(1 row)
Here's the indexing process:
$ indexer --rotate --all --config /path/to/sphinx-topical.conf
Sphinx 0.9.9-rc2 (r1785)
Copyright (c) 2001-2009, Andrew Aksyonoff
using config file '/path/to/sphinx-topical.conf'...
indexing index 'topicalindex_index'...
collected 2809 docs, 0.1 MB
sorted 0.0 Mhits, 100.0% done
total 2809 docs, 75007 bytes
total 0.067 sec, 1117456 bytes/sec, 41848.54 docs/sec
total 3 reads, 0.000 sec, 47.0 kb/call avg, 0.0 msec/call avg
total 7 writes, 0.000 sec, 37.0 kb/call avg, 0.0 msec/call avg
rotating indices: succesfully sent SIGHUP to searchd (pid=79833).
And the files showing they have content
[myself]:myapp(master)$ ll /path/to/data/
total 160
drwxr-xr-x 10 myself admin 340 Aug 29 08:56 ./
drwxr-xr-x 3 myself admin 102 Jun 1 2012 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 myself admin 33708 Aug 29 08:56 topical_index.spa
-rw-r--r-- 1 myself admin 51538 Aug 29 08:56 topical_index.spd
-rw-r--r-- 1 myself admin 326 Aug 29 08:56 topical_index.sph
-rw-r--r-- 1 myself admin 15721 Aug 29 08:56 topical_index.spi
-rw-r--r-- 1 myself admin 0 Aug 29 08:56 topical_index.spk
-rw------- 1 myself admin 0 Aug 29 08:56 topical_index.spl
-rw-r--r-- 1 myself admin 0 Aug 29 08:56 topical_index.spm
-rw-r--r-- 1 myself admin 52490 Aug 29 08:56 topical_index.spp
and then -- my search with 0 results
[myself]:myapp(master)$ search -i topicalindex_index -a "Abraham"
Sphinx 0.9.9-rc2 (r1785)
Copyright (c) 2001-2009, Andrew Aksyonoff
using config file '/usr/local/etc/sphinx.conf'...
index 'topicalindex_index': query 'Abraham ': returned 0 matches of 0 total in 0.000 sec
words:
1. 'abraham': 0 documents, 0 hits
Why am I getting 0 results when I search "Abraham". (Strangely, I do get results when searching "a")
Is this a problem with my conf file? Is it something else?
EDIT
I've noticed that when searching "a" it is only searching against those rows which do have content for the see_also_html field. The number of matches matches the count of fields which have data for each column.

Answer 1

sql_query = SELECT id, topic, reference, start_ref, end_ref, see_also_html FROM my_topicalindex
sql_attr_uint = topic
sql_attr_uint = reference
id | topic | reference | start_ref | end_ref | see_also_html
------+---------+--------------------+-----------+---------+---------------
2810 | Abraham | Genesis chs. 11–25 | 1011001 | 1025034 | blank
You've made topic and reference integer attributes. (So they won't be included as full-text fields)
Columns not made an attribute (excluding the first column!) are automatically fields.
So start_ref, end_ref and see_also_html will be full-text fields, and therefore searchable.

Answer 2

OUT OF TOPIC ANSWER
Note: for more readability in your file
you can replace
sql_query = SELECT id, topic, reference, start_ref, end_ref, see_also_html FROM my_topicalindex
by
sql_query = SELECT id, \
topic, \
reference, \
start_ref, \
end_ref, \
see_also_html \
FROM my_topicalindex
Just be careful \ would be the last character (not space)
Sample of statement where I'm happy to use this notation
sql_query = \
SELECT /* sphinx index article Video */ \
`article`.id AS id, \
UNIX_TIMESTAMP(`article`.fromDate) AS ressource_date, \
unix_timestamp(now()) AS indexing_date, \
`programs`.id AS emission_id, \
IFnull(cat.parent_id, cat.id) AS genre_id, \
`article`.`title` AS `title_str`, \
`article`.`title` AS `title`, \
`article`.`feed` AS `feed_ordinal`, \
`article`.`feed` AS `feed`, \
`article`.`category` AS `category`, \
`article`.`dossierId` AS `dossierId`, \
`article`.`mainImage` AS `mainImage`, \
group_concat(`keywords`.`translation`) AS `tags`, \
group_concat(o.id) AS `video_id_list`, \
concat(' summary:', \
`article`.summary, \
' synopsis', \
`article`.synopsis, \
' Summary Title :', \
`article`.summaryTitle, \
' Url', \
`article`.title_url, \
' Main', \
`article`.mainParagraph) AS content, \
concat( ' Signature:', \
`article`.signature) AS subcontent, \
UNIX_TIMESTAMP(article.fromDate) AS online_from_date, \
if ( UNIX_TIMESTAMP(article.toDate)<2000000000, \
UNIX_TIMESTAMP(article.toDate), \
2000000000) AS online_to_date \
FROM \
`article`.`article` \
LEFT JOIN \
`media`.`programs` \
ON \
`article`.`category` = `programs`.`articleReferenceCategory` \
LEFT JOIN \
`media`.`category` AS cat \
ON `programs`.mainCategoryId = cat.id \
LEFT JOIN \
article.article_keyword AS ak \
ON \
ak.articleId = article.id \
LEFT JOIN \
article.keyword AS keywords \
ON \
ak.keywordId = keywords.id \
AND `keywords`.`visible` = 1 \
AND `keywords`.`translation` !='' \
LEFT JOIN \
article.embed AS ae \
ON \
ae.articleId = article.id \
INNER JOIN \
media.`objects` AS o \
ON \
o.id = SUBSTRING_INDEX( SUBSTRING(ae.code, 5+LOCATE('rel="',ae.code)), '"', 1) \
AND o.type='video' \
AND o.status='complete' \
AND o.active=1 \
AND ( o.part_type IS NULL OR o.part_type = 'extract') \
AND o.wildcard not like 'www.%.be/presse%' \
\
WHERE \
`article`.`validated` = 1 \
AND `article`.`published` = 1 \
AND `article`.`deleted` = 0 \
AND `article`.`displayDate` < Now() \
AND `article`.`fromDate` < Now() \
AND `article`.`toDate` > Now() \
AND `article`.id >= $start \
AND `article`.id < $end \
GROUP BY `article`.id