Difference between revisions of "Drupal/C4/Solr-Search-and-Facets-Implementation/English"

Solr Search and Facets Implementation in Drupal8

• Introduction to Solr search
• Salient features of Solr search
• Installation of Solr search
• Creation of Facets

• Introduction to Solr search
• Salient features of Solr search
• Installation of Solr search and
• Creation of Facets

System requirement

To record this tutorial, I am using

• Ubuntu Linux 16.04 OS
• Drupal 8
• Firefox web browser

• Ubuntu Linux 16.04
• Drupal 8 and
• Firefox web browser

You can use any web browser as per your choice.

Pre-requisites

• You should have basic knowledge of Drupal
• If not, for relevant Drupal tutorials please visit http://spoken-tutorial.org
• A working Internet connection

If not, for relevant Drupal tutorials, please visit the link shown.

You should also have a working Internet connection.

API

• Application Programming Interface
• Set of rules to interact to each other
• For more details, see the “Additional Material” link

API stands for Application Programming Interface.

It has a set of rules that software programs can follow to interact with each other.

More information on API is given in the Additional Material link of this tutorial.

What is Solr

• Open source search platform used to build Search Application
• Create custom search engine

• Solr is an open source search platform used to build a Search Application.
• It enables us to create custom search engines that index databases, files and websites.

Solr Search API

• The default search does database search
• It leads to slower process and extra load on MySQL
• Solr provides a different server for searching
• It will speed up the search operation.

• The default search that comes with Drupal does database search.
• It leads to slower process and extra load on MySQL.
• But Solr provides a different server for searching. It will speed up the search operation.

Salient Features of Solr

• Scalable
• Full text search capabilities
• Flexible and extensible
• Friendly user interface
• Fault tolerance

• It is scalable.
• It has full text search capabilities.
• It is flexible and extensible.
• It has a friendly user interface.
• It has fault tolerance.

<<PAUSE>>

What is Solr core?

• Solr core is used to perform operations like indexing and analyzing
• It is a single index and associated configuration files
• We can index data with different structures
• A Solr server may contain one or multiple cores
• Multiple cores are used when we need multiple versions, languages, or configurations

Show text Bitnami Drupal Stack

The following steps are applicable to Bitnami Drupal Stack.

But most of the steps are applicable to any other Drupal installation, as well.

Type

sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y

Highlight root

Open your terminal and run the following commands to update and upgrade the machine.

Note that you should run this command as a root user.

Show text JRE or JDK

Since Solr is based on Java, we need to have JRE or JDK installed in our system.

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

So run the following command.

type sudo space add hyphen apt space update

Press Enter.

Press Enter.

So, run the following command.

<<PAUSE>>

Next we will learn to install Solr in our local machine.

Show text

www-us.apache.org/dist/lucene/solr

Type the following command.

Note that you can download any latest version from their website.

So type the following command.

Highlight the status

service space Solr space status

Press Enter.

We can see that the service Solr is installed in our system and activated as well.

<<PAUSE>>

Type sudo su - solr -c "/opt/solr/bin/solr create -c testcollection -n data_driven_schema_configs"

Highlight testcollection

We will now create a new solr core in Solr to index our Drupal content.

Type the following command carefully.

Here I have named the newly created core as testcollection.

We can access the Solr admin user interface through the port 8983.

In the URL bar, type http://localhost:8983/Solr/

That is all about Solr installation in our local system.

<<PAUSE>>

Show text mbstring extension of PHP & Composer

Show text Additional Material

Next we will implement the Solr search API in Drupal8.

For this, mbstring extension of PHP and composer should be installed in our machine.

The steps to install the above software are given in the Additional Material link of this tutorial.

Solarium is a Solr client library for PHP.

Execute the following command to install it.

Type the following command.

Type the following command.

At this point, we have downloaded all the required modules.

<<PAUSE>>

Go to Drupal8 site

Next go to the Drupal8 site and enable the modules that we have installed.

We can see that all the four modules have been enabled.

To do so, click on the Uninstall tab in the Extend page.

Click Uninstall button

Again click on the Uninstall button to confirm.

Switch to terminal

Type cp /home/spoken/drupal-8.4.4-0/apps/drupal/htdocs/modules/contrib/search_api_solr/solr-conf/6.x/* /var/solr/data/testcollection/conf

Highlight source and destination

Next we have to allow our Drupal to communicate with Solr.

For that, switch back to terminal and run the following command carefully.

This will copy the configuration files from modules folder of Drupal8 to the core of Solr.

Press Enter.

<<PAUSE>>

Go to Configuration tab -> SEARCH AND METADATA → Search API

Next we will configure the Solr server and index the available content in the default search index.

To do so, go to Configuration tab.

Click on the Search API under SEARCH AND METADATA.

Click on Edit of Solr Server

Click on Edit of Solr Server.

Show Solr core field

Type testcollection

In the Solr core field, type your core name.

I will type testcollection.

Highlight Status: enabled

Now we can see that the server connection could be reached and the core connection could be accessed.

Click Edit of Default Solr content index

Next we will index the available content in the Solr server.

Click on the Edit button of Default Solr content index.

For now, I will keep them as it is and click on the Save button at the bottom.

Click Index now at the bottom

Highlight Index Status

To index all the content, click on the Index now button at the bottom.

Now we can see all the 20 contents are indexed in the Solr server.

With this we have successfully enabled both the Solr server and index.

<<PAUSE>>

Go to Structure → Views

Highlight Solr search content

Next let us learn to search our content using the Solr search.

For that, first go to Structure, then Views.

We can see the Solr search content view here.

Highlight Path /solr-search/content

Hover the cursor on preview

Note that Solr search content is a page which can be accessed on the path /Solr-search/content.

We can also see the preview of the view.

Highlight localhost:8080

In the URL bar, type http://localhost:8080/drupal/solr-search/content

If you are not using Bitnami Drupal Stack, please use localhost instead of localhost:8080.

Show the results

In the Search field, type Drupal.

It displays few results which are having the word “Drupal” in their content.

<<PAUSE>>

Go to Configuration → SEARCH AND METADATA → Facets

Next we will learn to create Facets for categorizing the search results.

For doing so, go to Configuration tab.

Click on the Facets under SEARCH AND METADATA.

Click Save

I am selecting List of links for now.

Leave the remaining settings on default and click on the Save button to save the configuration.

Go to Structure → Block layout

Next we will learn to place the Facet which we configured now.

For that go to Structure → Block layout.

Click Save block button

Configure the block as per your need.

Click Save block button.

In the search field, type Drupal

Point to the results

Next we will go back to our Solr search content page and see how Facet works.

In the Search field, type Drupal.

It displays few results which have the word “Drupal” in their content.

With this, we come to the end of this tutorial.

<<PAUSE>>

Summary

• Install Solr application
• Install essential modules via composer
• Configure Solr search API
• Configure Facets

In this tutorial, we have learnt to-

• install Solr application
• install essential modules via composer
• configure Solr search API and
• configure Facets

Acknowledgement

Please download and watch it.

Spoken Tutorial Workshops

For more details, please write to us.

Acknowledgement

• NMEICT, Ministry of Human Resource Development and
• NVLI, Ministry of Culture

Government of India.

This is Priya from IIT Bombay signing off. Thanks for joining.