elasticsearch - Which custom search engine? -

i have website running on apache php , mysql.

i wish implement custom search engine on text stored in mysql table , on .pdf , .docx documents.

i not sure api go for.

i have looked @ google's custom search engine (cse) , elastic search. elastic, have learnt, can run on java-based server , unable go down route.

i know elastic can handle requirements through rest api. google cse able same, i.e. search through text stored in database tables , pdfs? other custom search apis out there possible?

solutions such google custom search engine (in case google site search) or other web robot (such nutch) read web-side of things: accessible browser (not being logged in) , classify url displaying web-pages (with title , text content’s extract).

if pdfs, docx , web-pages accessible without login, works extremely well. web-app creator should enable that. not mean normal user has access all, robot (e.g. springer publisher invites google bot content not normal browser).

if want search server access fields of database, needs talk database. google site search (a form of google custom search) not allow that. elasticsearch , apache solr allow that. however, web hosting services not make database ports accessible outside security reasons. thus, see requirement run search server on premises probably.

the requirement run java or google cse seems unavoidable. know of no solutions of same quality in other languages (e.g. drupal can offer mysql-based text search has far lower tolerance). nowadays, many cloud nodes can run java.