Zend_Search_Lucene and Java Lucene support a powerful query language. It allows searching for individual terms, phrases, ranges of terms; using wildcards and fuzzy search; combining queries using boolean operators; and so on. A detailed query language description can be found in the Zend_Search_Lucene component documentation. What follows are examples of some common query types and strategies. Searches for the word "hello" through all document fields. Important note! Java Lucene searches only through the "contents" field by default, but Zend_Search_Lucene searches through all fields. This behavior can be modified using the Zend_Search_Lucene::setDefaultSearchField($fieldName) method. Searches for two words. Both words are optional; at least one of them must be present in the result. Searches for two words; "hello" is required, "dolly" is optional. Searches for two words; "hello" is required, 'dolly' is prohibited. In other words, if the document matches "hello", but contains the word "dolly", it will not be returned in the set of matches. Searches for the phrase "hello dolly"; a document only matches if that exact string is present. Searches for the phrase "The Right Way" within the title field and the word "go" within the text field. Searches for the phrase "The Right Way" within the title field and the word "go" word appearing in any field of the document. Searches for the word "Do" within the title field and the words "it" and "right" words through all fields; any single one matching will result in a document match. Search for words matching the pattern "te?t", where "?" is any single character. Search for words matching the pattern "test*", where "*" is any sequence of zero or more characters. Search for the range of terms (inclusive). Search for the range of terms (exclusive). Fuzzy search for the word "roam". Boolean query. All supported queries can be constructed through Zend_Search_Lucene's query construction API. Moreover, query parsing and query constructing may be combined: addSubquery($userQuery, true /* required */); $query->addSubquery($constructedQuery, true /* required */); ]]>