Using Lucene to Query File properties in Windows

Question

Hi All,

I am planning to use Apache lucense in one of my projects, I want to index files based on the file properties (I won’t be indexing the data) and I want lucense to query the index so that I can quickly find list of files to based on the properties .

E.g: give me all the files with access time greater than 10/10/2005 and access time less than 10/04/2010 and file created by james.

Can i use Lucene for these kind of projects ? or i better of using windows search (the foor print is very heavy almost 5 MB :( ) and i have to bundling this as part of my application is seems to tough.

Can you please suggest is there any better alternatives here?

Answer 1

Lucene is definitely a feasible option for indexing file properties, I have done something very similar in the past (searching for images based on image properties).

I am slightly concerned with respect to getting the properties. Are you planning on using the APIs within the File class? Glancing quickly, I find that the APIs are very limiting; as a result, you are probably getting these properties elsewhere and store them in an intermediate medium.

An alternative to Lucene is Sphinx, it seems more light-weight (based on my experience and observation, Lucene is better for larger datasets, in the millions range). I have never worked with Sphinx, but have heard good things. It might be worthwhile to investigate before you commit.

Answer 2

Can i use apache POI or Apache Tika so that i don't need to do lot of processing ?