Installing Apache Solr

This page describes how to install and start Apache Solr 7 and create a new Solr core based on a Magnolia configuration set. Apache Solr is a standalone enterprise-grade search platform that’s needed together with the Magnolia Solr module for high-performance searches of large volumes of documents.

The installation procedure for Apache Solr described on this page has been reduced to just a minimum of steps required to setup, start and use Solr with a Magnolia instance. For a full account please refer to the official Solr documentation at solr.apache.org/guide/.

Solr module compatibility with Apache Solr

From version 5.2 the module supports Solr 7.x.
From version 5.0 it is compatible with Solr 5.x.
Older versions of the module are compatible with Solr 4.

Getting Apache Solr

Download Apache Solr and extract the zip to your computer.

Version-specific installation notes

Version 5.2

This version contains changes in solrconfig.xml and managed-schema. Please read the notes below before updating.

Changes in Solr 5.x configuration files

`managed-schema`

New fields:
- jcrname ( <field name="jcrname" type="string" stored="true" indexed="true"/>).
- nodetype (<field name="nodetype" type="string" stored="true" indexed="true"/>).
- (dynamic) asset_* (<dynamicField name="asset_*" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="true" multiValued="false"/>).
Removed:
- <copyField source="*" dest="text"/> (replaced by CloneFieldUpdateProcessorFactory in solrconfig.xml, see also below).
- Dynamic field *_point (in collision with the *_point fields when parsed by Apache Tika in documents).
- Dynamic field *_id (Indonesian) (in collision with the *_id fields when parsed by Apache Tika in documents).

`solrconfig.xml`

Changes in ExtractingRequestHandler:
- By default only document content is indexed (into the asset_content field).
- All fields that are not defined in the schema are ignored (<str name="uprefix">ignored_</str>).
The CloneFieldUpdateProcessorFactory was added into the add-unknown-fields-to-the-schema update request processor chain. This replaces <copyField source="*" dest="text"/>, which was removed from the managed-schema.
The uuid, version, id, path, workspace, nodetype, assetproviderid, url, type and all ignored fields are by default excluded from copying to the text field.

Updating to 5.2

After a successful installation of Solr 7, retrigger the indexers (/modules/content-indexer/config/indexers/<indexer_name>) by changing their property indexed to false.

Version 5.0.2

This version contains changes in solrconfig.xml and managed-schema please read the notes before updating to 5.0.2.

Updating to 5.0.2

Option 1

If you don’t plan to index same content by two different indexers or crawlers then you don’t need to update your solrconfig.xml and managed-schema for your solr core. Only change what you need to do is add uniqueKeyField property with value id into your solr sear result page.

Option 2

Use new managed-schema and solrconfig.xml configuration files for your solr core and for $SOLR_HOME/server/solr/configsets/magnolia_data_driven_schema_config.

It’s needed to recreate all Solr indexes, because of the changes in configuration files. Probably the easiest way to do it is recreate the solr core and then retrigger indexing in Magnolia.

Use new solrconfig.xml and managed-schema configuration files for $SOLR_HOME/server/solr/configsets/magnolia_data_driven_schema_config Magnolia config set.

Delete magnolia core an create it again

cd $SOLR_HOME/bin
./solr delete -c magnolia
./solr create_core -c magnolia -d magnolia_data_driven_schema_configs

Retrigger the indexers, by changing their property indexed to false

Version 5.0

Solr Search Provider module version 5.0 brings support to Solr 5 (officially tested with version 5.3.1).

Regarding the changes in the module, it is recommended to completely recreate the Solr indexes after to upgrade to version 5.0.

Creating a configuration set

Create a new Magnolia config set by duplicating the $SOLR_HOME/server/solr/configsets/_default folder and name it to magnolia_data_driven_schema_configs.

In this new configuration set you need to create or modify two files, solrconfig.xml and managed-schema:

solrconfig.xml, a configuration file with the most parameters affecting Solr itself.
managed-schema, a file that specifies what fields the Magnolia content can contain, how those fields are added to the index, and how they are queried.
For further details see https://solr.apache.org/guide/7_3/documents-fields-and-schema-design.html.

Configuration example

Please be aware that different Solr versions may require different content in the Solr configuration files. The example configuration files attached below are for Solr 7.3.0.

Download the following example configuration files (based on Solr data_driven_schema_configs Config sets) and replace with them the default files in the newly created set magnolia_data_driven_schema_configs/conf:

Starting Solr

Go to the $SOLR_HOME/bin folder and start the Solr server:

./solr start

Check if Solr is running

Check if Solr is running by issuing the following command:

./solr status

Creating a new core

A core is a running instance of a Lucene index along with all the Solr configuration required to use it. Create a new core called magnolia:

./solr create_core -c magnolia -d magnolia_data_driven_schema_configs

Use the admin dashboard

By opening http://localhost:8983/solr/ you may use Solr’s admin dashboard. Form there you can also create cores:

Please note that the type of installation described above works for testing and development purposes. For production installation see Taking Solr to Production (Solr 8.6 link).