Solr is an open source enterprise search platform built on Lucene. It allows full-text search and indexing of documents. Key features include optimization for high traffic, standards-based APIs, an admin interface, and scalability. Documents are composed of fields with metadata defining how they are indexed and searched. The schema defines field types and mappings. Documents are added, updated, and deleted via HTTP requests. Searching supports wildcards, fuzzy matching, proximity, ranges, faceting, highlighting, sorting, and paging of results.

1. Getting started with Apache Solr
by Nadim, Humayun Kabir

2. What is Solr?
● Solr is an open source enterprise full text search server based on the
Lucene Java search library.
● Solr runs in a Java servlet container such as Tomcat or Jetty
● Solr is free software and a project of the Apache Software Foundation
● Solr is a sub-project of Lucene and can be found at http://lucene.
apache.org/solr/

3. Key Features
● Optimized for High Volume Web Traffic
● Standards Based Open Interfaces – XML and HTTP
● Comprehensive HTML Administration Interface
● Server statistics exposed over JMX for monitoring
● Scalability through efficient replication
● Flexibility with XML configuration and Plugins
● Push vs Crawl indexing method
● Advanced Full-Text search
● Full Features : http://lucene.apache.org/solr/features.html

5. Schema.xml
The schema declares:
● what kinds of fields there are
● which field should be used as the
unique/primary key
● which fields are required
● how to index and search each field

6. The XML consists of a number of parts. We'll look at these in turn:
Field Types
Fields
Misc

7. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<schema name="example" version="1.5">
<fields>
<field name="id" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="true"
multiValued="false" />
<field name="lead" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" />
<dynamicField name="*_i" type="int" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
</fields>
<uniqueKey>id</uniqueKey>
<copyField source="title" dest="text"/>
<types>
<fieldType name="string" class="solr.StrField" sortMissingLast="true" />
</types>
</schema>

8. ● An index is built of one or more Documents.
● A Document consists of one or more Fields.
● A Field consists of a name, content and metadata telling Solr how to
handle the content.
● For instance, Fields can contain strings, numbers, booleans or dates, as
well as any types you wish to add. A Field can be described using a
number of options that tell Solr how to treat the content during indexing
and searching.

9. Document
<add>
<doc>
<field name=“id”>05991</field>
<field name=“name”>Peter Parker</field>
<field name=“supername”>Spider-Man</field>
<field name=“category”>superhero</field>
<field name=“powers”>agility</field>
<field name=“powers”>spider-sense</field>
</doc>
</add>

11. POST Data:
curl 'http://localhost:8983/solr/update?commit=true' --data-binary @monitor.xml -H 'Content-type:
application/xml'
curl 'http://localhost:8983/solr/update/json?commit=true' --data-binary @books.json -H 'Content-type:
application/json'
curl 'http://localhost:8983/solr/update/csv?commit=true' --data-binary @info.csv -H 'Content-type:text/plain;
charset=utf-8'

12. Update Data

13. Deleting Documents
Delete by Id
<delete>
<id>05591</id>
</delete>
Delete by Query (multiple documents)
<delete>
<query>manufacturer:microsoft</query>
</delete>

15. Fuzzy matching (inexact matches)
● May want to search for any words that start with a particular prefix (known
as wildcard searching),
● May want to find spelling variations within one or two characters (known as
fuzzy searching or edit distance searching),
● May want to match two terms within some maximum distance of each other
(known as proximity searching).

16. WILDCARD SEARCHING
Query: office OR officer OR official OR officiate OR …
Query: offi* Matches office, officer, official, and so on
Query: off*r Matches offer, officer, officiator, and so on
Query: off?r Matches offer, but not officer

17. Leading wildcards
engineer* will not be expensive
e* will be expensive
wildcard searching is that wildcards are only meant to work on individual
search terms, not on phrase searches
Works: softwar* eng?neering
Does not work: "softwar* eng?neering"

18. FUZZY / EDIT - DISTANCE SEARCHING
An edit distance is defined as an insertion, a deletion, a substitution, or a
transposition of characters.
Query: administrator~ Matches:
administrator,
administrater,
administratior, and
so forth

19. Query: administrator~1 Matches within one edit distance.
Query: administrator~2 Matches within two edit distances.
(This is the default if no edit distance is provided.)
Query: administrator~N Matches within N edit distances.
Please note that any edit distances requested above two will become
increasingly slower and will be more likely to match unexpected terms.

20. PROXIMITY SEARCHING
Query: "chief executive officer" OR "chief financial officer" OR "chief marketing
officer" OR "chief technology officer" OR ...
Query : "chief officer"~1
– Meaning : chief and officer must be a maximum of one position away.
– Examples : "chief executive officer" , "chief financial officer"
Query: "chief officer"~2
– Meaning: chief and officer must be a maximum of two edit distances away.
– Examples: "chief business development officer" , "officer chief"
Query: "chief officer"~N
– Meaning: Finds chief within N positions of officer .

21. RANGE SEARCHING
February 2, 2012, and August 2, 2012
Query: created:[2012-02-01T00:00.0Z TO 2012-08-02T00:00.0Z]
Query: yearsOld:[18 TO 21] Matches 18, 19, 20, 21
Query: title:[boat TO boulder] Matches boat, boil, book, boulder, etc.
Query: price:[12.99 TO 14.99] Matches 12.99, 13.000009, 14.99, etc.
Query: yearsOld:{18 TO 21} Matches 19 and 20 but not 18 or 21
Query: yearsOld:[18 TO 21} Matches 18, 19, 20, but not 21
Query: yearsOld:[* TO 21}

22. Paging
Query 1
/select?q=*:*&sort=id&fl=id&
rows=5&
start=0
: will return 1 to 5
Query 2
/select?q=*:*&sort=id&fl=id&
rows=5&
start=5
:will return 6 to 10

23. Sorting results
● sort=someField desc, someOtherField asc
● sort=score desc, date desc
● sort=date desc, popularity desc, score desc
*** Any field you wish to sort on must be marked as indexed=true

24. Sorting results
● sort=someField desc, someOtherField asc
● sort=score desc, date desc
● sort=date desc, popularity desc, score desc
*** Any field you wish to sort on must be marked as indexed=true

25. Faceted search

26. Field faceting
http://localhost:8983/solr/select?
q=*:*&facet=true&facet.field=name
http://localhost:8983/solr/select?
q=*:*&facet=true&facet.field=tags

27. Query faceting
http://localhost:8983/solr/select?q=*:*&fq=price:[5 TO 25]
http://localhost:8983/solr/select?q=*:*&fq=price:[5 TO 25]&
fq=state:("New York" OR "Georgia" OR "South Carolina")

28. http://localhost:8983/solr/select?q=*:*&rows=0&facet=true&
facet.query=price:[* TO 5}&
facet.query=price:[5 TO 10}&
facet.query=price:[10 TO 20}&
facet.query=price:[20 TO 50}&
facet.query=price:[50 TO *]

29. Applying filters to your facets

30. http://localhost:8983/solr/select?
q=*:*&facet=true&
facet.field=state&
facet.field=city&
facet.query=price:[* TO 10}&
facet.query=price:[10 TO 25}&
facet.query=price:[25 TO 50}&
facet.query=price:[50 TO *]

31. http://localhost:8983/solr/select?
q=*:*&facet=true&
facet.field=state&
facet.field=city&
facet.query=price:[* TO 10}&
facet.query=price:[10 TO 25}&
facet.query=price:[25 TO 50}&
facet.query=price:[50 TO *]
fq=state:California

34. http://localhost:8983/solr/select?q=*:*&facet=true&facet.mincount=1&
facet.field=name&facet.field=tags
http://localhost:8983/solr/select?q=*:*&facet=true&facet.mincount=1&
facet.field=name&facet.field=tags&
fq=tags:coffee
http://localhost:8983/solr/select?q=*:*&facet=true&facet.mincount=1&
facet.field=name&facet.field=tags&
fq=tags:coffee&
fq=tags:hamburgers

35. Hit highlighting
http://localhost:8983/solr/select?
q=java&
hl=true&
df=name

36. References:
● http://lucene.apache.org/solr/
● https://cwiki.apache.
org/confluence/display/solr/Apache+Solr+Reference+Guide
● http://lucene.apache.org/solr/4_2_1/tutorial.html
● Book : “Solr in Action”

37. Questions?