Full-text search in CouchDB

Question

I have a problem and hope to get an answer from you :-)

So, I took geonames.org and imported all their data of German cities with all districts.

If I enter \

Answer 1

If I understand your problem right, probably all you need is already built in the CouchDB.

1. To get a range of documents with names beginning with e.g. "Ham". You may use a request with a string range: startkey="Ham"&endkey="Ham\ufff0"
2. If you need a more comprehensive search, you may create a view containing names of other places as keys. So you again can query ranges using the technique above.

Here is a view function to make this:

function(doc) {
    for (var name in doc.places) {
        emit(name, doc._id);
    }
}

Also see the CouchOne blog post about CouchDB typeahead and autocomplete search and this discussion on the mailing list about CouchDB autocomplete.