# Using ferret indexes **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [October 15, 2008, 11:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-ferret-indexes/150964 "2008-10-15T11:21:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![lyes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/ed8c4c/32.png) [@lyes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/lyes)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2008, 11:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-ferret-indexes/150964/1 "2008-10-15T11:21:16Z")
Hello list, I am newbe with ruby rails, and I want to now if is it possible de access indexes created with Ferret using acts\_as\_ferret (I assume that we can do that) Links to some good tutorials will be welcome thanks ---
**Author:** ![lyes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/ed8c4c/32.png) [@lyes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/lyes)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2008, 12:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-ferret-indexes/150964/2 "2008-10-15T12:33:25Z")
Question is a bit unclear, you want just to use Ferret for indexing? Yes that’s possible. You want to do anything else with those indexes? Tell us, what you want to do. But I would recommend using Sphinx instead of Ferret. People had quite some trouble with Ferret, everything working fine in development, but as soon as they went into production, the thing was troublesome to get working on the server and in several cases keywords where not added to the index with no obvious reason. In our company we had worked on another companies project, kind of image search with tags. They had 150.000 images, of which 30.000 where missing in the index. Rebuilding the index was no help at all. Switching to Sphinx solved the problem in no time at all. Search this forum if you want to know more, there where quite some discussions going about this. > **[Sphinx | Open Source Search Engine](http://www.sphinxsearch.com/)** > > Sphinx is an open source full text search server, designed with performance, relevance (search quality), > and integration simplicity in mind. Sphinx lets you either batch index and search data stored in files, an SQL database, NoSQL storage -- > or... [http://blog.evanweaver.com/files/doc/fauna/ultrasphinx/classes/ActiveRecord/Base.html](http://blog.evanweaver.com/files/doc/fauna/ultrasphinx/classes/ActiveRecord/Base.html) > **[Using Sphinx search engine in Ruby on Rails | Dmytro Shteflyuk's Home](https://kpumuk.info/ruby-on-rails/using-sphinx-search-engine-in-ruby-on-rails/)** > > Almost all Web-applications needs data search logic and really often this logic should have full-text search capabilities. If you are using MySQL database, you can use its FULLTEXT search, but it's not efficient when you have a large amout of data.... ---
**Author:** ![lyes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/ed8c4c/32.png) [@lyes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/lyes)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2008, 11:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-ferret-indexes/150964/3 "2008-10-16T11:12:15Z")
Some help will be very very welcome! cheers ---
**Author:** ![lyes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/ed8c4c/32.png) [@lyes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/lyes)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2008, 1:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-ferret-indexes/150964/4 "2008-10-15T13:11:07Z")
Hello! Thank you for your response! > You want to do anything else with those indexes? Tell us, what you > want to do. > > But I would recommend using Sphinx instead of Ferret. > People had quite some trouble with Ferret, everything working fine in > development, No! I can not use Sphinx because I already have write an index/serach application using ferret in order to index some documents for my company! What I want to do is to open the indexes I will create with my application inside a ruby rails web application and I want to know if I can load them using acts\_as\_ferret! In all the acts\_as\_ferret tutorials, they show how we can create and serach in indexes created with acts\_as\_ferret itself. Is there a mean to create an index with acts\_as\_ferret in a ruby rails web application using an already existing index created by ferret in order to offer a web interface for the serach operation. You will agree that offering a command line for a simple user to search is not a ver goos idea > [http://www.sphinxsearch.com/http://blog.evanweaver.com/files/doc/fauna/ultrasphinx/classes/Active...http://kpumuk.info/ror-plugins/using-sphinx-search-engine-in-ruby-on-](http://www.sphinxsearch.com/http://blog.evanweaver.com/files/doc/fauna/ultrasphinx/classes/Active...http://kpumuk.info/ror-plugins/using-sphinx-search-engine-in-ruby-on-)… > PS: thank you for the links Cheers