# Picolena, a ferret+rails documents search engine **URL:** \ **Category:** Ferret\ **Created:** [April 20, 2008, 10:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/picolena-a-ferret-rails-documents-search-engine/135300 "2008-04-20T22:35:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ericd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/58f4c7/32.png) [@ericd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericd)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2008, 10:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/picolena-a-ferret-rails-documents-search-engine/135300/1 "2008-04-20T22:35:03Z")
Hi everybody! I am proud to present you a small project I have been working on for a while: Picolena, a documents search engine written in Rails. ( [http://picolena.devjavu.com/](http://picolena.devjavu.com/) ). It obviously uses Ferret for indexing and searching, and adds some plain text extractors in order to index [OOffice.org](http://OOffice.org), pdf and MS Office documents (and some others as well). Everything is packed in a gem (gem install picolena), with a few rake tasks, a multi-threaded indexer, a language guesser, a rails frontend and some specs to be sure everything works fine. I would love to hear some feedback from acts\_as\_ferret developers or users! My project is in now way supposed to be a competitor of AAF: we have different goals (ActiveRecord indexing plugin vs. stand-alone rails-app for documents indexing), but still a lot in common. I dare say Picolena would be useful in a lot of companies (as a google-mini alternative), and has already been working in production for a few months without a hitch. This has been made possible thanks to Ferret’s incredible speed. Kudos to the devs! Best regards, Eric demo website : [http://citynet.hft-stuttgart.de:4000/](http://citynet.hft-stuttgart.de:4000/) trac : [http://picolena.devjavu.com](http://picolena.devjavu.com) rubyforge : [http://rubyforge.org/projects/picolena/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/picolena/) svn repo : [http://svn.devjavu.com/picolena/trunk/](http://svn.devjavu.com/picolena/trunk/) ---
**Author:** ![ericd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/58f4c7/32.png) [@ericd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericd)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2008, 6:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/picolena-a-ferret-rails-documents-search-engine/135300/2 "2008-05-15T18:21:42Z")
Hey Eric, I’ve looked at the demo and am quite impressed. Thanks for making your code available!! Cheers, Jan 2008/4/20 Eric D. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid): > ## I dare say Picolena would be useful in a lot of companies (as a rubyforge : [http://rubyforge.org/projects/picolena/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/picolena/) svn repo : [http://svn.devjavu.com/picolena/trunk/](http://svn.devjavu.com/picolena/trunk/) > > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). > > * * * > > Ferret-talk mailing list > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > [http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk](http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk) – Jan P. Rechtsanwalt Grünebergstraße 38 22763 Hamburg Tel +49 (0)40 41265809 Fax +49 (0)40 380178-73022 Mobil +49 (0)171 3516667 ---
**Author:** ![ericd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/58f4c7/32.png) [@ericd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericd)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2008, 1:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/picolena-a-ferret-rails-documents-search-engine/135300/3 "2008-05-16T13:34:34Z")
You’re welcome. I’m pleased to know it could be useful for other people too. Open-sourcing it forced me to write a better code than usual, with specs and some documentation. Please feel free to ask me any question about it. And if you want to help this project, please spread the word! BTW, I switched (like every other, basically) to git and github, there: > **[GitHub - EricDuminil/picolena: a lightweight but powerful documents search...](https://github.com/EricDuminil/picolena/tree/master)** > > master MfG :), Eric Jan P. wrote: > Hey Eric, > I’ve looked at the demo and am quite impressed. Thanks for making your > code > available!! > > Cheers, > > Jan > > 2008/4/20 Eric D. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid): > > > ## I dare say Picolena would be useful in a lot of companies (as a rubyforge : [http://rubyforge.org/projects/picolena/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/picolena/) svn repo : [http://svn.devjavu.com/picolena/trunk/](http://svn.devjavu.com/picolena/trunk/) > > > > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). > > > > * * * > > > > Ferret-talk mailing list > > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > > [http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk](http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk) > > – > Jan P. > Rechtsanwalt > > Grünebergstraße 38 > 22763 Hamburg > Tel +49 (0)40 41265809 Fax +49 (0)40 380178-73022 > Mobil +49 (0)171 3516667