search-engine

Search engine built with Python backend to retrieve and display LA Times news articles.

1. Use the following command to run IndexEngine

python IndexEngine.py <path_to_gz_file> <output_directory>

• <path_to_gz_file>: The path to the latimes.gz file.
• <output_directory>: The directory where the documents and metadata will be stored.

Example:

python IndexEngine.py /path/to/latimes.gz /path/to/output_dir

2. Ensure the storage directory is populated with your dataset and metadata files:

• Inverted Index: storage/inverted-index.json
• Lexicon: storage/lexicon.json
• Document Lengths: storage/doc-lengths.txt
• Document Numbers: storage/docno_list.txt
• Document Files: Files organized by date (e.g., storage/1989/08/20/LA082089-0008.txt).

3. To start the search engine:

  python interactive_bm25.py

Input: Enter a query string to search for relevant documents.

Output: Top 10 ranked documents with their headlines, dates, and query-biased snippets.

Actions:

• Enter a rank number to view the full document.
• Enter 'N' to start a new query.
• Enter 'Q' to quit.