materio-base-d7/README.txt

Solr search
-----------

This module provides an implementation of the Search API which uses an Apache
Solr search server for indexing and searching. Before enabling or using this
module, you'll have to follow the instructions given in INSTALL.txt first.

Supported optional features
---------------------------

All Search API datatypes are supported by using appropriate Solr datatypes for
indexing them. By default, "String"/"URI" and "Integer"/"Duration" are defined
equivalently. However, through manual configuration of the used schema.xml this
can be changed arbitrarily. Using your own Solr extensions is thereby also
possible.

The "direct" parse mode for queries will result in the keys being directly used
as the query to Solr. For details about Lucene's query syntax, see [1]. There
are also some Solr additions to this, listed at [2]. Note however that, by
default, this module uses the dismax query handler, so searches like
"field:value" won't work with the "direct" mode.

[1] http://lucene.apache.org/java/2_9_1/queryparsersyntax.html
[2] http://wiki.apache.org/solr/SolrQuerySyntax

Regarding third-party features, the following are supported:

- search_api_autocomplete
  Introduced by module: search_api_autocomplete
  Lets you add autocompletion capabilities to search forms on the site. (See
  also "Hidden variables" below for Solr-specific customization.)
- search_api_facets
  Introduced by module: search_api_facetapi
  Allows you to create facetted searches for dynamically filtering search
  results.
- search_api_facets_operator_or
  Introduced by module: search_api_facetapi
  Allows the creation of OR facets.
- search_api_mlt
  Introduced by module: search_api_views
  Lets you display items that are similar to a given one. Use, e.g., to create
  a "More like this" block for node pages.
- search_api_multi
  Introduced by module: search_api_multi
  Allows you to search multiple indexes at once, as long as they are on the same
  server. You can use this to let users simultaneously search all content on the
  site – nodes, comments, user profiles, etc.
- search_api_spellcheck
  Introduced by module: search_api_spellcheck
  Gives the option to display automatic spellchecking for searches.

If you feel some service option is missing, or have other ideas for improving
this implementation, please file a feature request in the project's issue queue,
at [3].

[3] http://drupal.org/project/issues/search_api_solr

Specifics
---------

Please consider that, since Solr handles tokenizing, stemming and other
preprocessing tasks, activating any preprocessors in a search index' settings is
usually not needed or even cumbersome. If you are adding an index to a Solr
server you should therefore then disable all processors which handle such
classic preprocessing tasks.

Also, due to the way Solr works, using a single field for fulltext searching
will result in the smallest index size and best search performance, as well as
possibly having other advantages, too. Therefore, if you don't need to search
different sets of fields in different searches on an index, it is adviced that
you collect all fields that should be searchable into a single field using the
“Aggregated fields” data alteration.

Hidden variables
----------------

- search_api_solr_autocomplete_max_occurrences (default: 0.9)
  By default, keywords that occur in more than 90% of results are ignored for
  autocomplete suggestions. This setting lets you modify that behaviour by
  providing your own ratio. Use 1 or greater to use all suggestions.

Customizing your Solr server
----------------------------

The schema.xml and solrconfig.xml files contain extensive comments on how to
add additional features or modify behaviour, e.g., for adding a language-
specific stemmer or a stopword list.
If you are interested in further customizing your Solr server to your needs,
see the Solr wiki at [4] for documentation. When editing the schema.xml and
solrconfig.xml files, please only edit the copies in the Solr configuration
directory, not directly the ones provided with this module.

[4] http://wiki.apache.org/solr/

You'll have to restart your Solr server after making such changes, for them to
take effect.

Developers
----------

The SearchApiSolrService class has a few custom extensions, documented with its
code. Methods of note are deleteItems(), which treats the first argument
differently in certain cases, and the methods at the end of service.inc.