How to stop running indexing before starting another?

Question

I'm making a web app that uses Lucene as search engine. First, the user has to select a file/directory to index and after that he is capable to search it (duh!). My problem happens when the user is trying to index a huge amount of data: for example, if it's taking too long and the user refreshs the page and try to index another directory, an exception is thrown because the first indexing is still running (write.lock shows up). Known that, how is it possible to stop the first indexing? I tried closing the IndexWriter with no success.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Why do you want to interrupt the first indexing operation and restart it again?

In my opinion you should display a simple image which shows that the system is working (as Nielsen says: "The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.") and when the user press refresh you should intercept the event and prevent the execution of another indexing process.

Answer 2

You are probably trying to open an indexwriter instance on the index directory which has already indexwriter open on it. If you have opened indexwriter on two different index directory then the exception with write.lock won't happen. Could you please check that the new indexwriter instance is not writing to previously opened index directory which has already indexwriter opened on it.