MySQL Bugs: #46139: Fulltext index on a blob when a custom parser is used

Bug #46139	Fulltext index on a blob when a custom parser is used
Submitted:	12 Jul 2009 20:59	Modified:	14 Jul 2009 11:25
Reporter:	Tom Kleinpeter	Email Updates:
Status:	Verified	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Server: FULLTEXT search	Severity:	S4 (Feature request)
Version:		OS:	Any
Assigned to:		CPU Architecture:	Any
Tags:	BLOB, custom-parser, fulltext-index

Description:
I've written my own full text parser to allow me to efficiently index some binary data for searching.  I'd like to store the data as a blob so that I don't have to worry about any character set issues, but unfortunately I can't do this because fulltext indexes can only be created on text columns.  This limitation seems incorrect -- if I've written my own parser that can handle it, it shouldn't matter if the indexed column is a blob or a text.

Thanks!

How to repeat:
Create a table with a blob.  Try to add a fulltext index using a custom parser.

Suggested fix:
Remove the text-only limitation on fulltext indexes when a custom parser is specified.

Thank you for the feature request. I think it is reasonable, as I see no good arguments why Word documents, for example, should be stored in text columns instead of blobs, and they are one of those types of documents that really need customer parser plugins.