Phonetic

Phonetic matching

Phonetic matching

Phonetic matching, for example "Jon" vs. "John", allows searching for terms based on their pronunciation. This capability can be a useful tool when searching for names of people.

Phonetic matching is based on the use of a phonetic algorithm. A phonetic algorithm transforms the input term to an approximate representation of its pronunciation. This allows terms to be indexed and searched by their pronunciation.

As of v1.4, RediSearch provides phonetic matching of text fields specified with the PHONETIC attribute. This causes the terms in such fields to be indexed both by their textual value as well as their phonetic approximation.

Performing a search on PHONETIC fields will, by default, also return results for phonetically similar terms. This behavior can be controlled with the $phonetic query attribute.

Phonetic algorithms support

Redis Stack currently supports a single phonetic algorithm, the Double Metaphone (DM). It uses the implementation at the slacy/double-metaphone GitHub site, which provides general support for Latin languages.