Scripting in Sphinx config

Did you know that Sphinx config enables you to use shebang syntax? Here is an example of how useful it can be in some cases: imagine you have 3 tables with identical structure that you would like to index into 3 indexes one per table. You can just make a php script which would do this and use it as a Sphinx config instead of describing each source/index separately:

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php

$source = "source [TABLE]_src {
    type      = mysql
    sql_host    = localhost
    sql_user    = user
    sql_pass    = password
    sql_db      = db
    sql_port    = 3306

    sql_query = SELECT [TABLE].id, title, body FROM [TABLE] WHERE [TABLE].id >=\$start and [TABLE].ID <=\$end
    sql_query_range = SELECT MIN(id), MAX(id) FROM [TABLE]
    sql_range_step = 1000
}
";

$index = "index [TABLE]_idx {
    source      = [TABLE]_src
    path      = /path/to/indexes/idx_[TABLE]
}
";

$tables = array('Cats', 'Dogs', 'Mouses');

foreach ($tables as $table) {
	echo str_replace('[TABLE]', $table, $source)."\n";
        echo str_replace('[TABLE]', $table, $index)."\n";
}
?>

searchd {
    listen          = localhost:9306:mysql41
    pid_file        = /path/to/pid_file.pid
}

Now you can use this file just like a normal sphinx config:

snikolaev@a5530:~$ searchd -c sphinx.conf
Sphinx 1.11-id64-dev (r2500)
Copyright (c) 2001-2010, Andrew Aksyonoff
Copyright (c) 2008-2010, Sphinx Technologies Inc (http://sphinxsearch.com)

using config file 'sphinx.conf'...