Session on Sitecore Content Search API by Nidhi Sinha from Sapient. (Sitecore User Group Bangalore)

1. Sitecore Content Search
API
USING SOLR
SITECORE USER GROUP BANGALORE BY NIDHI SINHA

2. Solr
Solr 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.
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3. 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
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4. Solr SetUp
Java 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:MyProjectSolrsolr-5.4.1
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5. Running Solr as Windows service using
NSSM
NSSM 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 BY NIDHI SINHA

6. NSSM Setup
Download NSSM
Download nssm 2.24 from https://nssm.cc/release/nssm-2.24.zip
Extract NSSM zip into folder for eg: D:MyProjectnssm-2.24nssm- 2.24
Run the below command in command prompt
 D:MyProjectnssm-2.24nssm- 2.24win64nssm install solr5.4.1
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7. Installing SOLR….
This command will open NSSM service installer window
 Enter D:MyProjectSolrsolr-5.4.1binsolr.cmd in Path
Enter D:MyProjectSolrsolr-5.4.1bin in Startup Directory
Enter start –f –p 8983 in Arguments
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8. Check for successful installation
If 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.
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9. Check if service is running or not
Right click on this service and click on Start
Now go to browser and browse http://localhost:8983/solr
It will show Solr interface.
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10. Integrating Sitecore with Solr
Disable / Delete Lucene configuration files
Take the back up of your Website
Go to WebsiteApp_ConfigInclude folder in website and search for“Lucene”
Select all the files and delete them (disable them by adding .example
at the end)
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11. Enable Solr configuration files
Go to WebsiteApp_ConfigInclude folder in website and search for “Solr”
Enable all the Solr config files by removing .disabled/.example from the file names
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12. Sitecore Indexing
Login 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.
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13. Group Query on Solr
http://localhost:8983/solr/sitecore_web_index/select?q=_group:02853efdd2864a7eaef955676
dc5a735
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14. What is SOLRNet and how its used
SolrNet 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.
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15. 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; }
}
}
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16. 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;
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17. 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);
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18. 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; }
}
}
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19. 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"));
}
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20. 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
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21. 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
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22. 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.
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23. 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.
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24. Features of ContentSearch API
Sorting
Pages
The many face(t)s of a search query
Dealing with more complex queries
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25. 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' />
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26. Example of Computed Field
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27. Credits
UI/UX  Saurabh Sinha , Sapient Nitro
Topic Selection  Sateesh Chandolu, Sapient Nitro
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