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What is Solr Search Engine Bundle?

ezplatform-solr-search-engine as the package is called, aims to be a transparent drop in replacement for the SQL based "Legacy" search engine powering Search API by default. By enabling Solr and re-indexing your content, all your exising Search queries using SearchService, will be powered by Solr automatically. This allows you to scale up your eZ Publish Platform installation and be able to continue development locally against SQL engine, and have test infrastructure, Staging and Prod powered by Solr. Thus remove considerable load from your database so it can focus on more important things, like publishing .

Se Architecture page for further information on the architecture of eZ Publish Platform and eZ Platform.

How to setup Solr Search engine

Step 1: Enabling Bundle

In this step you'll enable the Solr Search Engine Bundle which handles indexing on all updates to Platform stack API, and to handle all search queries going to Search Service.

1. Code Block
   language bash title command line
   composer require --no-update ezsystems/ezplatform-solr-search-engine:~1.0 composer update

2. Activate EzPublishSolrSearchEngineBundle by adding the following lines to your ezpublish/EzPublishKernel.php file:

   new EzSystems\EzPlatformSolrSearchEngineBundle\EzSystemsEzPlatformSolrSearchEngineBundle()

Step 2: Enabling Legacy extension

Being on 5.x, you'll need to also make sure searches in legacy (like in admin interface) is using the new solr search engine, this functionality is provided by ezplatformsearch extension made by NetGen.

1. Add/Update composer dependencies:

   Code Block
   language bash title command line
   composer require netgen/ezplatformsearch:~1.1

2. Activate extension in site.ini, typically ezpublish_legacy/settings/override/site.ini.append.php

   Code Block
   title site.ini
   [ExtensionSettings] ActiveExtensions[]=ezplatformsearch # Also make sure to comment out or remove any occurrence of other search engines like ezfind #ActiveExtensions[]=ezfind

Step 3: Configuring & Starting Solr

First download and extract Solr, we currently support Solr 4.10.4:

• solr-4.10.4.tgz or solr-4.10.4.zip

Secondly, copy configuration files needed for eZ Solr Search Engine bundle, here from root of your project to the place you extracted Solr:

# Make sure to change the /opt/solr/ path with where you have placed Solr
cp -R vendor/ezsystems/ezplatform-solr-search-engine/lib/Resources/config/solr/* /opt/solr/example/solr/collection1/conf/

/opt/solr/bin/solr start -f 

Thirdly, Solr Bundle does not commit solr index changes directly on repository updates, leaving it up to you to tune this using solrconfig.xml as best practice suggests, example config:

<autoCommit>
  <!-- autoCommit is here left as-is like it is out of the box in Solr 4.10.4, this controls hard commits for durability/replication -->
  <maxTime>${solr.autoCommit.maxTime:15000}</maxTime> 
  <openSearcher>false</openSearcher> 
</autoCommit>

<autoSoftCommit>
  <!-- Soft commits controls mainly when changes becomes visible, by default we change value from -1 (disabled) to 100ms, to try to strike a balance between Solr performance and staleness of HttpCache generated by Solr queries -->
  <maxTime>${solr.autoSoftCommit.maxTime:100}</maxTime> 
</autoSoftCommit>

Step 4: Configuring bundle

The Solr search engine bundle can be configured many ways, here are some examples

solr_dsn: 'http://localhost:8983/solr'

Single Core example (default)

Out of the box in eZ Platform the following is enabled for simple setup:

ez_search_engine_solr:
    endpoints:
        endpoint0:
            dsn: %solr_dsn%
            core: collection1
    connections:
        default:
            entry_endpoints:
                - endpoint0
            mapping:
                default: endpoint0

ez_search_engine_solr:
    endpoints:
        endpoint0:
            dsn: %solr_dsn%
            core: core0
       endpoint1:
            dsn: %solr_dsn%
            core: core1
    connections:
        default:
            entry_endpoints:
                - endpoint0
                - endpoint1
            mapping:
                translations:
                    jpn-JP: endpoint1
                # Other languages, for instance eng-US and other western languages are sharing core
                default: endpoint0

ez_search_engine_solr:
    endpoints:
        endpoint0:
            dsn: %solr_dsn%
            core: core0
       endpoint1:
            dsn: %solr_dsn%
            core: core1
       endpoint2:
            dsn: %solr_dsn%
            core: core2
       endpoint3:
            dsn: %solr_dsn%
            core: core3
       endpoint4:
            dsn: %solr_dsn%
            core: core4
       endpoint5:
            dsn: %solr_dsn%
            core: core5
       endpoint6:
            dsn: %solr_dsn%
            core: core6
    connections:
        default:
            entry_endpoints:
                - endpoint0
                - endpoint1
                - endpoint2
                - endpoint3
                - endpoint4
                - endpoint5
                - endpoint6
            mapping:
                translations:
                    jpn-JP: endpoint1
                    eng-US: endpoint2
                    fre-FR: endpoint3
                    ger-DE: endpoint4
                    esp-ES: endpoint5
                # Not really used, but specified here for fallback if more languages are suddenly added by content admins
                default: endpoint0
                # Also use separate core for main languages (differs from content object to content object)
                # This is useful to reduce number of cores queried for always available language fallbacks
                main_translations: endpoint6

Step 5: Configuring repository with the specific search engine

The following is an example of configuring Solr Search Engine, where connection name is the same as in the example above, and engine is set to solr:

doctrine:
   dbal:
       connections:
           my_repository_connection:
               #...
 ezpublish:
   #...
   repositories:
       my_repository:
           engine: legacy
           connection: my_repository_connection
           search:
               engine: solr # One of legacy (default) or solr
               connection: default # If legacy same as storage applies, if solr use same as you defined in step 3
#...
ez_search_engine_solr:
   endpoints:
       endpoint0:
           dsn: %solr_dsn%
           core: collection1
   connections:
       default:
           entry_endpoints:
               - endpoint0
           mapping:
               default: endpoint0

Step 6: Clear prod cache

While Symfony dev environment keeps track of changes to yml files, prod does not, so to make sure Symfony reads the new config we clear cache:

php ezpublish/console --env=prod cache:clear

Step 7: Run CLI indexing command

Last step is to execute initial indexation of data:

php ezpublish/console --env=prod --siteaccess=<name> ezplatform:solr_create_index

Providing feedback

After completing the installation you are now free to use your site as usual. If you get any excpetions for missing features, have feedback on performance, or want to discuss, join our community slack channel at https://ezcommunity.slack.com/messages/ezplatform-use/