## org.apache.lucene.search
Class Collector

    java.lang.Object
      org.apache.lucene.search.Collector

Direct Known Subclasses:
  CachingCollector, MultiCollector, PositiveScoresOnlyCollector, TimeLimitingCollector, TopDocsCollector, TotalHitCountCollector

    public abstract class Collector

extends Object

Expert: Collectors are primarily meant to be used to gather raw results from a search, and implement sorting or custom result filtering, collation, etc.

Lucene's core collectors are derived from Collector. Likely your application can use one of these classes, or subclass `TopDocsCollector`, instead of implementing Collector directly:

- `TopDocsCollector` is an abstract base class that assumes you will retrieve the top N docs, according to some criteria, after collection is done.
- `TopScoreDocCollector` is a concrete subclass `TopDocsCollector` and sorts according to score + docID. This is used internally by the `IndexSearcher` search methods that do not take an explicit `Sort`. It is likely the most frequently used collector.
- `TopFieldCollector` subclasses `TopDocsCollector` and sorts according to a specified `Sort` object (sort by field). This is used internally by the `IndexSearcher` search methods that take an explicit `Sort`.
- `TimeLimitingCollector`, which wraps any other Collector and aborts the search if it's taken too much time.
- `PositiveScoresOnlyCollector` wraps any other Collector and prevents collection of hits whose score is <= 0.0

Collector decouples the score from the collected doc: the score computation is skipped entirely if it's not needed. Collectors that do need the score should implement the `setScorer(org.apache.lucene.search.Scorer)` method, to hold onto the passed `Scorer` instance, and call `Scorer.score()` within the collect method to compute the current hit's score. If your collector may request the score for a single hit multiple times, you should use `ScoreCachingWrappingScorer`.

NOTE: The doc that is passed to the collect method is relative to the current reader. If your collector needs to resolve this to the docID space of the Multi*Reader, you must re-base it by recording the docBase from the most recent setNextReader call. Here's a simple example showing how to collect docIDs into a BitSet:

     IndexSearcher searcher = new IndexSearcher(indexReader);
     final BitSet bits = new BitSet(indexReader.maxDoc());
     searcher.search(query, new Collector() {
       private int docBase;

       // ignore scorer
       public void setScorer(Scorer scorer) {
       }

       // accept docs out of order (for a BitSet it doesn't matter)
       public boolean acceptsDocsOutOfOrder() {
         return true;
       }

       public void collect(int doc) {
         bits.set(doc + docBase);
       }

       public void setNextReader(AtomicReaderContext context) {
         this.docBase = context.docBase;
       }
     });

Not all collectors will need to rebase the docID. For example, a collector that simply counts the total number of hits would skip it.

NOTE: Prior to 2.9, Lucene silently filtered out hits with score <= 0. As of 2.9, the core Collectors no longer do that. It's very unusual to have such hits (a negative query boost, or function query returning negative custom scores, could cause it to happen). If you need that behavior, use `PositiveScoresOnlyCollector`.

Since:
  2.9
WARNING: This API is experimental and might change in incompatible ways in the next release.

Constructor Summary
`Collector()`

Method Summary
`abstract boolean` `acceptsDocsOutOfOrder()` Return `true` if this collector does not require the matching docIDs to be delivered in int sort order (smallest to largest) to `collect(int)`.
`abstract void` `collect(int doc)` Called once for every document matching a query, with the unbased document number.
`abstract void` `setNextReader(AtomicReaderContext context)` Called before collecting from each `AtomicReaderContext`.
`abstract void` `setScorer(Scorer scorer)` Called before successive calls to `collect(int)`.

Methods inherited from class java.lang.Object
`clone, equals, finalize, getClass, hashCode, notify, notifyAll, toString, wait, wait, wait`

Constructor Detail

### Collector

    public Collector()

Method Detail

### setScorer

    public abstract void setScorer(Scorer scorer)
                            throws IOException

  Called before successive calls to `collect(int)`. Implementations that need the score of the current document (passed-in to `collect(int)`), should save the passed-in Scorer and call scorer.score() when needed.

  Throws:
    `IOException`

### collect

    public abstract void collect(int doc)
                          throws IOException

  Called once for every document matching a query, with the unbased document number.

  Note: This is called in an inner search loop. For good search performance, implementations of this method should not call `IndexSearcher.doc(int)` or `IndexReader.document(int)` on every hit. Doing so can slow searches by an order of magnitude or more.

  Throws:
    `IOException`

### setNextReader

    public abstract void setNextReader(AtomicReaderContext context)
                                throws IOException

  Called before collecting from each `AtomicReaderContext`. All doc ids in `collect(int)` will correspond to `IndexReaderContext.reader()`. Add `AtomicReaderContext.docBase` to the current `IndexReaderContext.reader()`'s internal document id to re-base ids in `collect(int)`.

  Parameters:
    `context` - next atomic reader context
  Throws:
    `IOException`

### acceptsDocsOutOfOrder

    public abstract boolean acceptsDocsOutOfOrder()

  Return `true` if this collector does not require the matching docIDs to be delivered in int sort order (smallest to largest) to `collect(int)`.

  Most Lucene Query implementations will visit matching docIDs in order. However, some queries (currently limited to certain cases of `BooleanQuery`) can achieve faster searching if the `Collector` allows them to deliver the docIDs out of order.

  Many collectors don't mind getting docIDs out of order, so it's important to return `true` here.

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