Content search api in sitecore 8.1

Sitecore Content Search API USING SOLR

SITECORE USER GROUP BANGALORE BY NIDHI SINHA

SolrSolr is built around Lucene

Lucene allows us to add search capability to our applications, and exposed an easy-to-use API, while hiding all the search-related complex operations

Solr is a web application, that offers an entire infrastructure and a lot more features in addition to what Lucene offers, making it more manageable to work with powers provided by Lucene.

SITECORE USER GROUP BANGALORE SITECORE USER GROUP BANGALORE BY NIDHI SINHA

Sitecore is SMART Sitecore, to make our life easier actually provides an abstraction over the low level details of working

with native search technologies like Lucene and Solr

Use one API from Sitecore, to work with either Lucene or Solr

Sitecore were to support a new search index technology in addition to Lucene and Solr, like Elasticsearch (which is also built on top of Lucene), they could fit this in the same way, and we won't need to change any of our query specific code, only configuration


Solr SetUpJava is prerequisite to setup Solr. So, download Java from http://www.java.com/en/download/ and install it if it’s not already installed.

Download solr-5.4.1.zip folder from htttp://www.us.apache.org/dist/lucene/solr/5.4.1

Extract zip file into folder for eg: D:\MyProject\Solr\solr-5.4.1


http://www.java.com/en/download/

Running Solr as Windows service using NSSMNSSM is a service helper which doesn’t suck. Other service helper programs suck becausethey don’t handle failure of the applications running as a service.

NSSM also features a graphical service installation and removal facility.


SITECORE USER GROUP BANGALORE

NSSM SetupDownload NSSM

Download nssm 2.24 from https://nssm.cc/release/nssm-2.24.zip

Extract NSSM zip into folder for eg: D:\MyProject\nssm-2.24\nssm- 2.24\

Run the below command in command prompt

D:\MyProject\nssm-2.24\nssm- 2.24\win64\nssm install solr5.4.1



Installing SOLR….This command will open NSSM service installer window

Enter D:\MyProject\Solr\solr-5.4.1\bin\solr.cmd in Path

Enter D:\MyProject\Solr\solr-5.4.1\bin in Startup Directory

Enter start –f –p 8983 in Arguments



Check for successful installationIf service is installed successfully, it will show message below message

Go to windows services(sevices.msc) and check Solr 5.4.1 service is available or not.



Check if service is running or notRight click on this service and click on Start

Now go to browser and browse http://localhost:8983/solr

It will show Solr interface.

Integrating Sitecore with SolrDisable / Delete Lucene configuration files

Take the back up of your Website

Go to \Website\App_Config\Include folder in website and search for“Lucene”

Select all the files and delete them (disable them by adding .example

at the end)



Enable Solr configuration filesGo to \Website\App_Config\Include folder in website and search for “Solr”

Enable all the Solr config files by removing .disabled/.example from the file names



Sitecore IndexingLogin to Sitecore and go to Control Panel

Click on Indexing Manager

Select index name to rebuild

Click on Rebuild and wait till the indexing is completed.

After indexing completed, browse below url and check records are there are not

http://localhost:8983/solr/sitecore_master_index/select?q=*

Similarly repeat above steps to rebuild all the indexes.


http://localhost:8983/solr/sitecore_master_index/select?q=*


Group Query on Solrhttp://localhost:8983/solr/sitecore_web_index/select?q=_group:02853efdd2864a7eaef955676dc5a735



What is SOLRNet and how its usedSolrNet is an Apache Solr client for .NET

Using these SolNet dlls we can build queries to get results from Solr.

Step 1: Have a model to Fetch your results into

Example of a Model class.



Model class using SolrNet using SolrNet.Attributes;

namespace MyProject.Model

{

public class MyResult

{

#region Generic

[SolrField("title_t")]

public string Title { get; set; }

[SolrField("description_t")]

public string Description { get; set; }

}

}



Example of a SolrNet Query QueryOptions options;

if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(langauge)) { options = new QueryOptions { FilterQueries = new ISolrQuery[] { new SolrQueryByField("_language", langauge), new SolrQueryByField("title_t", "My Title"), new SolrQueryInList("country_sm",countries) } }; return options;


Create a Generic Method to establish connection to Solr

Public class GetSolrConnection<T>()

{

ISolrOperations<T> solr;

solr = SolrOperations.ConnectToIndex<T>(_solrUrl);

return solr;

}

return GetSolrConnection<MyClass>().Query(query,options);


Example of Model using Content Search API for SOLR

using Sitecore.ContentSearch;

using Sitecore.ContentSearch.SearchTypes;

using System;

using System.Collections;

using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace MyProject.Models

{

public class TestClass : SearchResultItem

{

[IndexField("title_t")]

public string Title { get; set; }

[IndexField("publisheddate_t")]

public string DisplayDate { get; set; }

}

}



Highlights of Content Search API ISearchIndex index = ContentSearchManager.GetIndex("sitecore_master_index")

using (IProviderSearchContext context = index.CreateSearchContext())

{

var results = context.GetQueryable<TestClass>().Where(x => x.Content.Contains(“Test"));

}



How the Query Works: Get a handle to the search index you want to work on

The GetIndex(string indexName) method on the ContentSearchManager instance that returns a ISearchIndex instance.

The ISearchIndex instance represents the given search index,

where you will be able to get different informations about the actual index, but you can also do things like triggering a rebuilding of the index



How the Query Works: Open a connection to the search index

This is done by calling the CreateSearchContext() method, that effectively opens a connection to the search index

It’s like opening a database connection



Perform queries on the search index

Call the GetQueryable<T>() method context instance , that returns an instance of type IQueryable<T>

This is where the really cool part comes, as you are now able to write standard LINQ queries using the IQueryable<T> instance, where you can tune your search query against data in the search index.



Important for Content Search API

The generic parameter T can be of any type, as long as it either is, or inherits from, the SearchResultItem base class, which is the default implementation provided by Sitecore.



Features of ContentSearch API Sorting

Pages

The many face(t)s of a search query

Dealing with more complex queries



Example of Content Search API with Coveo

Content Search API model class with Coveo

public class BlogItem : SearchResultItem

{

[IndexField("RelatedContent")] [TypeConverter(typeof(IndexFieldEnumerableConverter))] public virtual IEnumerable<ID> RelatedContentIds { get; set; }

}

Configuration File Entry

<fieldType fieldName="RelatedContent" isMultiValue="true" isSortable="false" isFacet="false" includeForFreeTextSearch="false" settingType='Coveo.Framework.Configuration.FieldConfiguration, Coveo.Framework' />



Example of Computed Field



Credits UI/UX Saurabh Sinha , Sapient Nitro

Topic Selection Sateesh Chandolu, Sapient Nitro


Technology

Content search api in sitecore 8.1