Lucene Sitecore Search Base Components

<index id="{indexName}" type="Sitecore.Search.Index, Sitecore.Kernel">
 <param desc="name">$(id)
 </param><param desc="folder">__{indexName}
 </param><Analyzer ref="search/analyzer" />
 <locations hint="list:AddCrawler">
 <customindex type="Sitecore.Search.Crawlers.DatabaseCrawler, 
 Sitecore.Kernel">
 <Database>
 web
 </Database>
 <Root>
 {fullItemPath}
 </Root>
 <Tags>
 {contentTag}
 </Tags>
 <include hint="list:IncludeTemplate">
 <template>
 {templateId}
 </template>
 </include>
 </customindex>
 </locations>
</index>

<Engines.HistoryEngine.Storage>
    <obj type="Sitecore.Data.$(database).$(database)HistoryStorage, Sitecore.Kernel">
        <param connectionStringName="$(id)">
        </param>
    </obj>
</Engines.HistoryEngine.Storage>

private static List<CustomItem> PerformSearchLuceneSortedQuery
(Query query, string sortField, int limit)
{
    List<CustomItem> items = new List<CustomItem>(); //define list to return

    Sitecore.Search.SearchResultCollection results;

    using (var context = new Sitecore.Search.IndexSearchContext("INDEX")) //change "INDEX" with the index id
    {
        Sort sorting = new Sort(sortField, true); //Lucene.Net.Search.Sort, the second parameter tells ascending or descending option
        var hits = new SearchHits(context.Searcher.Search(query, sorting));
        if (limit > 0 && hits.Length > limit)
            results = hits.FetchResults(0, limit);
        else
            results = hits.FetchResults(0, hits.Length);
    }

    //Take the search results and retrieve the items, if using custom item pattern the implicit operator will cast the item into the customItem.
    foreach (Sitecore.Search.SearchResult result in results)
    {
        Lucene.Net.Documents.Field url = result.Document.GetField("_url");
        Sitecore.Data.ItemUri itemUri = new Sitecore.Data.ItemUri(url.StringValue());
        Sitecore.Data.Items.Item item = Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem(itemUri.ToDataUri());

        items.Add(item);
    }

    return items;
}