Getting search results not based on a whole indexed value

Question

I'm using ThinkingSphinx for a simple searching which goes through Book model. my book_indexes.rb looks like this:

ThinkingSphinx::Index.define :book, with: :active_record do
  indexes title
  indexes author
  indexes publishing_date
  indexes isbn
end  

and controller action looks like this

  def index
    @books = Book.search(params[:search])
  end  

so far everything works as it is supposed, when i type "bible" it returns Book titled "Bible". But is it possible to get search result which are not based eg on a whole title? In more simple words i would like to get "bible" whenever i search for "bib" or "b".

EDIT

my thinking_sphinx.yml is now:

development:
  enable_star: true
  min_infix_len: 1
  min_prefix_len: 1

and controller action:

@books = Book.search("*#{params[:search]}*")

but it still works just the same, only without any query, just after loading the page, @books is nil

Answer 1

You're looking for the min_infix_len property. You can set your thinking_sphinx.yml configuration settings like this:

development:
  #.... truncated ....
  enable_star: true # Allow wildcard searching 
  min_infix_len: 3  # Indexes on values starting at 3 letters like "bib"

Answer 2

Thinking Sphinx allows you to use wildcards so when you search like this instead:

@books = Book.search("*#{params[:search]}*")

It will also work when you dont use the whole word!