Forem: Hrushi yadav

Deep Dive on Phonetic vs Semantic Search

Hrushi yadav — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 09:08:36 +0000

Saw a viral post on Twitter comparing "Prashant" and "Croissant" and it got me thinking - how exactly does search work? What logic is behind it?

Luckily, I follow Arpit who had already made a video breaking this down (I’ve linked that below). After watching it, I figured: why not try building something similar over the weekend? Surprisingly, it only took 2 hours because I already had a basic understanding of search algorithms.

To really get into this, I had to go deeper — here’s what I found:

🧠 Lexical Search

Lexical search is your classic, text-based search. It matches documents based on exact word matches.

How it works:

Words are put into an inverted index — a data structure mapping words to the documents they appear in.

word 1 -> [doc1, doc2, doc3]
word 2 -> [doc1, doc4, doc5]

Real-world example:

"optimization" -> ['git.pdf','codeofconduct.md','readme.md']
"CICD" -> ['azurefundamentals.pdf','readme.md']

🔴 Limitations:

Doesn't understand meaning or sound of words.
One-to-one word mapping only:

"PullRequest" ≠ "PullRaquest"

Common issues:

Spelling variations: Hrushi vs Hrishi vs Rishi vs Rushi
Typos/misspellings: hrushikesh vs hrushkesh vs hrushiksh
Synonyms: car vs vehicle, automobile vs SUV
Abbreviations: AI vs Artificial Intelligence

🔍 Fuzzy Search

Fuzzy search handles typos or small spelling differences. It matches terms even when they aren’t exact.

Example:

Query: Prashant
Result matches (within edit distance ≤ 4):
- merchant
- elephant
- present
- variant

Edit Distance is how many changes you need to convert one word to another.

🔊 Phonetic Search

Phonetic search matches based on how a word sounds, not how it’s spelled.

It uses algorithms like:

Soundex
Metaphone
NYSIIS

How it works:

word -----------> phonetic key
"coffee" -------> KF (metaphone)

Example:

mikaela -> MKL (Soundex)
micaela -> MKL (Soundex)

kristen -> KRSTN (Metaphone)
cristen -> KRSTN (Metaphone)

✅ Strengths:

Great for matching spelling variations that sound alike.
Fast & doesn't need training data.
Lookup is indexed and efficient (O(n) encoding).

⚠️ Concerns:

Can lead to false positives — different words that sound similar can match.

Example:

text "file" => Soundex: F400 | Metaphone: FL "phile" => Soundex: P400 | Metaphone: FL

🧠 Semantic Search

Semantic search goes beyond words — it captures the meaning using NLP and embeddings.

How it works:

Each word/sentence is converted into a vector.

"laptop" -> [0.25, 0.742, 0.1232, 0.5453]

Perform k-NN search to find the closest vectors (similar meaning).

Pre-reqs:

Trained language model (like BERT, Word2Vec).
Corpus for training (e.g., news articles).

✅ Strengths:

Understands context.
Matches concepts not present in the corpus.

For example, your data doesn’t have "laptop" but has "notebook" — it’ll still match!

⚠️ Concerns:

Needs training and resources.
Vector comparisons are resource-intensive.
Approximation (ANN) may be needed for large datasets.

💡 Back to "Prashant vs Croissant"

None of the phonetic or semantic algorithms would match them — because:

prashant => Soundex: P625 | Metaphone: PRXNT | NYSIIS: PRASAD
croissant => Soundex: C625 | Metaphone: KRSNT | NYSIIS: CRASAD

They're phonetically and semantically unrelated.

So how did that tweet match them?

💭 Solution: Manual Synonym Mapping

Define a custom synonym map.

1. When query is "prashant"
2. Expand to "prashant OR croissant"
3. Fire the expanded query
4. Elasticsearch returns docs matching either

Simple and effective!

🔧 ElasticSearch Demo

I’ve created a full demo showing different types of search using AWS ElasticSearch. Check it out on GitHub.

References :
1) https://youtu.be/gZIVHSFgkvk?si=6YWgxL4PitvhZL8L
2) https://medium.com/@tzhaonj/metaphone-a-quick-and-efficient-method-for-fuzzy-name-matching-aaeb68d3c481

Zoom Meetings API Integration Guide

Hrushi yadav — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 20:27:38 +0000

Integrating Zoom's API allows you to automate meeting scheduling and management. With this integration, you can schedule and manage meetings without needing a paid Zoom plan. Here’s a step-by-step guide to get you started with Zoom API integration using Node.js and Express.

Prerequisites

Basic knowledge of Node.js and Express.
A Zoom account.
Node.js and npm installed on your machine.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Create a Zoom App

Create a Zoom Account: If you don't have one, sign up at Zoom Marketplace.
Develop an App: Go to the Zoom Marketplace and click on the "Develop" icon.
Build App: Click on "Build App" and select "Server to Server OAuth" app type.
Store Credentials: After creating the app, store the following details securely:

ZOOM_CLIENT_ID ZOOM_CLIENT_SECRET ZOOM_ACCOUNT_ID

2. Set Up Your Project

Create a Project Folder: Create a new folder for your project and initialize it with npm.

mkdir zoom-meeting-integration cd zoom-meeting-integration npm init -y

Install Dependencies: Install the required libraries using npm.

npm install axios body-parser dotenv express

Create Environment Variables: Create a .env file in the root directory of your project and add your Zoom credentials:

ZOOM_CLIENT_ID=YOUR_ZOOM_CLIENT_ID
ZOOM_CLIENT_SECRET=YOUR_ZOOM_CLIENT_SECRET
ZOOM_ACCOUNT_ID=YOUR_ZOOM_ACCOUNT_ID

3. Implement API Integration

Create an Index File: Create a file named index.js and set up your basic Express server:

const express = require('express');
const bodyParser = require('body-parser');
const axios = require('axios');
require('dotenv').config();

const app = express();
app.use(bodyParser.json());

// Your code will go here

app.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log('Server is running on port 3000');
});

Get an Access Token: Create a function to get an OAuth token from Zoom. Add the following code to index.js:

async function getAccessToken() {
  const response = await axios.post('https://zoom.us/oauth/token', null, {
    params: {
      grant_type: 'account_credentials',
    },
    auth: {
      username: process.env.ZOOM_CLIENT_ID,
      password: process.env.ZOOM_CLIENT_SECRET,
    },
  });
  return response.data.access_token;
}

API Payload

{
  "topic": "Sample Meeting",
  "type": 1,
  "duration": 30,
  "start_time": "2024-09-01T10:00:00Z",
  "agenda": "Discuss project updates"
}

Schedule a Meeting: Create an endpoint to schedule a meeting using the Zoom API:

app.post('/schedule-meeting', async (req, res) => {
  try {
    const token = await getAccessToken();
    const meetingData = {
      topic: 'Sample Meeting',
      type: 1,
      duration: 30,
      start_time: '2024-09-01T10:00:00Z',
      agenda: 'Discuss project updates',
    };

    const response = await axios.post('https://api.zoom.us/v2/users/me/meetings', meetingData, {
      headers: {
        Authorization: `Bearer ${token}`,
        'Content-Type': 'application/json',
      },
    });

    res.json(response.data);
  } catch (error) {
    res.status(error.response ? error.response.status : 500).send(error.message);
  }
});

Retrieve Meeting Link: Once you have the meeting ID, you can use it to get the meeting link:

app.get('/meeting-link/:meetingId', async (req, res) => {
  try {
    const token = await getAccessToken();
    const meetingId = req.params.meetingId;

    const response = await axios.get(`https://api.zoom.us/v2/meetings/${meetingId}`, {
      headers: {
        Authorization: `Bearer ${token}`,
      },
    });

    res.json({ join_url: response.data.join_url });
  } catch (error) {
    res.status(error.response ? error.response.status : 500).send(error.message);
  }
});

Sending Meeting Links Send Emails: After retrieving the meeting link, you can use any mail service (e.g., Nodemailer) to send the meeting link to participants.
Additional Information
Meeting Features: Note that the API for adding participants may require a paid Zoom plan. For free plans, you can only schedule meetings and share the links manually.

Refer to GitHub: For a complete implementation, check out the GitHub repository Zoom Meeting Scheduler.

By following these steps, you can successfully integrate Zoom API into your application for scheduling and managing meetings.