How can I use Lucene for personal name (first name, last name) search?

Question

I'm writing a search feature for a database of NFL players.

The user enters a search string like "Jason Campbell" or "Campbell" or "Jason".

I'm having trouble getting the appropriate results.

Which Analyzer should I use when indexing? Which Query when querying? Should I distinguish between first name and last name or just index the full name string?

I'd like the following behavior:

Query: "Jason Campbell" -> Result: exact match for 1 player, Jason Campbell

Query: "Campbell" -> Result: all players with Campbell in their name

Query: "Jason" -> Result: all players with Jason in their name

Query: "Cambel" [misspelled] -> Result: all players with Campbell in their name

Answer 1

StandardAnalyzer should work fine for all above queries. Your first query should be enclosed in double-quotes for an exact match, your last query would require a fuzzy query. For example you could set Cambell~0.5 and you could get Campbell as match(with the numeric value after the tilde indicating the fuzziness).

BTW I would suggest using Solr which provides features for spell-check and auto-suggest so you wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel. This is similar to Google's "did you mean..."