FastRI 0.2.0: full-text searching, smarter search strategies

Ruby
1

FastRI is an alternative to the ri command-line tool. It is much
faster, and
also allows you to offer RI lookup services over DRb. FastRI is smarter
than
ri, and can find classes anywhere in the hierarchy without specifying
the
“full path”. FastRI can perform full-text searching. Its RubyGems
support is
better than ri’s, and it knows which gem a method/class definition came
from.

Getting it

Additional information, tarballs… at
eigenclass.org

FastRI can be installed with RubyGems:
gem install fastri
(if you get an old version/a 404 error, please allow some time after the
release until the package propagates to the RubyForge mirrors). Please
read
below for an important note regarding the RubyGems packages.

Changes since version 0.1.1 (2006-11-10)

Features

  • fri can do full-text search (-S, --full-text); try fri -S byte order
  • fri can now determine where a method actually came from for core
    classes
    e.g. fri File.inject → docs for Enumerable#inject
  • you can specify which ports the DRb services must bind to:
    fastri-server -s 192.168.1.2:54321
    fri -s 192.168.1.2:12345
  • new search methods: “anywhere” (a) and “anywhere, case-indep.” (A)

Acknowledgements

Tomasz W.

  • contributed the code that allows fri to find a method in the ancestors
    for core classes

Usage

There are two parts to FastRI:

  • the server: fastri-server
  • the client: fri

FastRI uses a Rinda Ring to allow servers to be discovered automatically
without needing to indicate the DRb URIs manually. It can work across
machines if you make sure the ring server is bound to the correct
interface,
and the ACL permissions are correct.

Examples

$ fastri-server (creates the index on the first run, blocks)

Later, (times measured with a cold cache):
$ time ruby bin/fri -f plain Array#fetch

Array#fetch
array.fetch(index) → obj
[…]
real 0m0.287s (real 0m0.127s with a hot cache)
user 0m0.048s
sys 0m0.008s

Compare to:
$ time ri -T -f plain Array#fetch

Array#fetch
[…]
real 0m10.136s (real ~ 1.5s with a hot cache)
user 0m1.140s
sys 0m0.464s

This illustrates FastRI’s ability to locate classes deep in the class
hierarchy:

$ fri Base
------------------------------------------------------ Multiple
choices:

  ActionMailer::Base, ActionView::Base, ActionWebService::API::Base,
  ActionWebService::Base, ActionWebService::Client::Base,
  ActiveRecord::Base, MapReduce::ActiveRecord::Base,
  RSS::Maker::Base, Scruffy::Components::Base,
  Scruffy::Formatters::Base, Scruffy::Layers::Base,
  Scruffy::Renderers::Base, Scruffy::Themes::Base

$ fri Themes::Base
------------------------------------------- Class:
Scruffy::Themes::Base
Scruffy::Themes::Base
Author: Brasten S.

  Date:   August 14th, 2006

Compare to
$ ri Themes::Base … several seconds later …
Nothing known about Themes::Base

A small note about RubyGems + FastRI.

RubyGems adds a noticeable overhead to fri, making it run slower than if
you
installed it directly from the tarball with setup.rb.

Compare the execution time when installed with RubyGems:
$ time fri -f plain String > /dev/null

real 0m0.385s
user 0m0.244s
sys 0m0.036s

to the time fri actually takes to run, without the overhead introduced
by
RubyGems:
$ time ruby bin/fri -f plain String > /dev/null

real 0m0.088s
user 0m0.040s
sys 0m0.008s

If you care about those extra 300ms (and there are situations where they
will
matter, e.g. when using fri for method completion), get FastRI from the
tarballs.

License

FastRI is licensed under the same terms as Ruby. See LICENSE.

Feedback

Bug reports, patches, comments… are appreciated.
You can contact the author via [email protected]. Please add “fastri” to the
subject in order to bypass the spam filters.

2

I like fastri :slight_smile:

Did you implement a way to tell fri about the default pager it should
use?
On the 0.1.1 announcement thread you said you probably would have
done this in 0.2.0.
I tried by setting a PAGER envvar but it didn’t work (many unix tools
check for that envvar, “PAGER=cat man man” is just an example).

3

On Fri, Nov 17, 2006 at 12:12:52AM +0900, Gabriele M. wrote:

I like fastri :slight_smile:

:slight_smile:

Did you implement a way to tell fri about the default pager it should use?
On the 0.1.1 announcement thread you said you probably would have done this
in 0.2.0. I tried by setting a PAGER envvar but it didn’t work (many unix
tools check for that envvar, “PAGER=cat man man” is just an example).

Sorry, it’s not in 0.2.0, but you can find it in HEAD; just get
http://eigenclass.org/repos/fastri/head/bin/fri

$ fri -h

Usage: fri [options]
-s, --bind ADDR Bind to ADDR for incoming DRb
connections.
(default: 127.0.0.1)
-O, --order ORDER Specify lookup order.
(default: eEnNpPxX)
Uppercase: case-indep.
e:exact n:nested p:partial
(completion)
x:nested and partial
a:match method name anywhere
–show-matches Only show matching entries.
-S, --full-text Perform full-text search.
-F, --full-text-dir DIR Use full-text index in DIR
(default:
/home/batsman/.fastri-fulltext)
-f, --format FMT Format to use when displaying
output:
ansi, plain (default: ansi)
-P, --[no-]pager Use pager.
(default: don’t)
–pager-cmd PAGER Use pager PAGER.
(default: don’t)
-w, --width WIDTH Set the width of the output.
-h, --help Show this help message

fri will use a pager by default in full-text search mode, (either the
one
given to --pager-cmd, ENV[“PAGER”], “less”, “more” or “pager”, in that
order)
but not in normal mode, unless you ask for it with -P.

You can alias fri=“fri -P” to always use a pager, and it will honor the
PAGER
env. variable.

I might as well implement option parsing for ENV[“FRI_OPTIONS”].

4

:From => “Mauricio Julio Fernández Pradier”

On Fri, Nov 17, 2006 at 12:12:52AM +0900, Gabriele M. wrote:

> I like fastri :slight_smile:

:slight_smile:

Hi Mauricio,

  1. it seems that fri does not implem multiple queries yet? eg

C:\temp>fri upcase downcase
---------------------------------------------------------- String#upcase
str.upcase => new_str

 Returns a copy of _str_ with all lowercase letters replaced with
 their uppercase counterparts. The operation is locale
 insensitive---only characters ``a'' to ``z'' are affected.

    "hEllO".upcase   #=> "HELLO"

C:\temp>

yet

C:\temp>ri -f plain -T upcase downcase
---------------------------------------------------------- String#upcase
str.upcase => new_str

 Returns a copy of _str_ with all lowercase letters replaced with
 their uppercase counterparts. The operation is locale
 insensitive---only characters ``a'' to ``z'' are affected.

    "hEllO".upcase   #=> "HELLO"

-------------------------------------------------------- String#downcase
str.downcase => new_str

 Returns a copy of _str_ with all uppercase letters replaced with
 their lowercase counterparts. The operation is locale
 insensitive---only characters ``A'' to ``Z'' are affected.

    "hEllO".downcase   #=> "hello"
  1. also, can we allow a -T for fri (since some do like pager while
    others like do not --sometimes. i prefer piping and teeing and all
    output in one :slight_smile:

C:\temp>fri -f plain -T upcase downcase
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/optparse.rb:1381:in `complete’: invalid option: -T
(OptionParser::InvalidOption)

  1. it would be nice if queries (if possible) may return related topics.
    eg, something like, “Related methods: capitalize, downcase, upcase,
    trim, ltrim, etc…”. This is very good for noobies like me. this may be
    quite a hard work since we may need an index…

thanks for fri. it really is fast even on mswindows.
kind regards -botp

5

Hi,

remote access doesn’t work for me. Anyone got this up an running? I did
something like:

fastri-server -a 192.168.100.0/24 -s 192.168.100.163
Looking for Ring server…
No Ring server found, starting my own.
$ fastri-server 0.0.1 (FastRI 0.2.0) listening on
druby://192.168.100.163:35800
ACL:
deny all
allow 127.0.0.1
allow 192.168.100.0/24

Local access works just fine, but from remote I got:
$ fri -s 192.168.100.163 Array
Couldn’t initialize DRb and locate the Ring server.

Any ideas?

Regards

Thomas

6

On Fri, Nov 17, 2006 at 11:08:56AM +0900, Peña, Botp wrote:

  1. it seems that fri does not implem multiple queries yet? eg

oh, I’d never used that with ri (actually, I didn’t use ri that much,
for the
reason you know)

  1. also, can we allow a -T for fri (since some do like pager while others
    like do not --sometimes. i prefer piping and teeing and all output in one :slight_smile:

In HEAD, you have
$ fri -h
…
-P, --[no-]pager Use pager.
(default: don’t)
–pager-cmd PAGER Use pager PAGER.
(default: don’t)

By default, it doesn’t use a pager, unless you are doing full-text
searches.

  1. it would be nice if queries (if possible) may return related topics. eg,
    something like, “Related methods: capitalize, downcase, upcase, trim, ltrim,
    etc…”.

Yes, I’m thinking about the best way to achieve this; the obvious
candidate is
latent semantic indexing.

This is very good for noobies like me. this may be quite a hard work since
we may need an index…

You cannot keep playing the newbie card for years :wink: … you’ve been
around
since Jan 2001 at least! (I found your 1st post, according to blade, in
RubyConf’s foundational thread [ruby-talk:9868]!)

7

Well on a cisco router, setting up an ACL like that would prevent anyone
from accessing it because it would hit the first rule (deny all) and
then
stop. Now, I’m a Ruby newbie, and I’ve never tried what you’re trying,
but
that’s the first thing that I would check. Can you put the deny all at
the
end of the ACL list?

8

On Wed, Nov 22, 2006 at 12:34:29AM +0900, Thomas N. wrote:

remote access doesn’t work for me. Anyone got this up an running? I did
something like:

fastri-server -a 192.168.100.0/24 -s 192.168.100.163
====================
$ fri -s 192.168.100.163 Array
=================
Couldn’t initialize DRb and locate the Ring server.

The address given to fri -s ADDR is not the address of the server
(that one
is autodiscovered using the Ring), but the address the local DRb service
must
bind to (in short, fri also exports a DRb service that will be used by
the
remote fastri-server to tell fri where it is).

So, if your server is 192.168.100.163 and your client is running on
192.168.100.164, you’d have to do

(in 192.168.100.163)
$ fastri-server -a 192.168.100.0/24 -s 192.168.100.163

(in 192.168.100.164)
$ fri -s 192.168.100.164 Array

or

$ export FASTRI_ADDR=192.168.100.164
$ fri Array

I’m revisiting that code to see if I can make ‘fri Array’ work without
specifying the local address, but for the time being the above should
work.

9

Thx a lot. It works perfectly that way. It’s almost sort of RTFM, but I
misunderstood the sentence “Note that FASTRI_ADDR is the local
address: the server will be discovered automatically.”

Regards,

Thomas