sphinxapi | Python version of Sphinx searchd client | REST library

The '*' in the second param is just which index(es) to search.

I suspect it's mainly due to whole word matching. Sphinx matches whole words. With 'words' defined as per charset_table http://sphinxsearch.com/docs/current/conf-charset-table.html

ie MATCH('@email johndoe') is only matching addresses with johndoe in them as a word. default charset_table keeps . - and @ (common in emails!) all as separators so would match johndoe@domain.com or email@johndoe.com, but NOT email@myjohndoe.com, the word being indexed is myjohndoe not johndoe

Whereas mysql 'LIKE' will happy match part words. eg email like '%johndoe%' would johndoesmith@domain.com, johndoes555@domain.com and 555@johndoes.comor whatever. Its a pure substring match.

In short might want to tweak charset_table. could . - and @ all be word chars, so email would be whole word.

alternatively might just enable part word matching with min_infix_len. http://sphinxsearch.com/docs/current.html#conf-min-infix-len

then could do MATCH('@email *johndoe*') which would get much closer results.

complementary to min_infix_len would be expand_keywords http://sphinxsearch.com/docs/current.html#conf-expand-keywords

then the * wildcards would be added automatically, so could go back to MATCH('@email johndoe')

setFilter takes an Array of values. And they need to be numeric (type_id is a numeric attribute)

Sphinx does not allow you to aggregate over fields that aren't scalars (e.g. integers). I'm assuming that the type field is for some kind of a referential value. You could use another table, say type_dictionary: