Lucene query with field dependency

Question

I have a lucene index of documents that have an _IsPrivate field. I need to query the index to retrieve all documents that are either _IsPrivate == false or _IsPrivate == true and _Owner == me. I've been trying the following lucene query, but I'm not getting the expected results...

_IsPrivate:false OR (_IsPrivate:true  AND _Owner:me)

The result is that I'm only getting documents that I own (public and private).

Any thoughts one how I can rewrite my query?

Sandbeck Sandbeck · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-09T18:22:03

I would use "BooleanQuery" to performe that kind of operation. You make 2 queries, one for each complete search statement, and then add them together with the "SHOULD" operator.

var bq = new BooleanQuery();
var bq1 = new BooleanQuery();
bg1.add(new Term("_IsPrivate", "false"), BooleanClause.Occur.MUST);
var bq2 = new BooleanQuery();
bg2.add(new Term("_IsPrivate", "true"), BooleanClause.Occur.MUST);
bg2.add(new Term("_Owner", "me"), BooleanClause.Occur.MUST);
bq.add(bq1, BooleanClause.Occur.SHOULD);
bq.add(bq2, BooleanClause.Occur.SHOULD);

It might be a bit cumbersome, but I really like to organise my queries this way.

Hope it helps.

Lucene query with field dependency

1 Answers