Solrj is a java client to access solr. It offers a java interface to add, update, and query the solr index.
CommonsHttpSolrServer
The CommonsHttpSolrServer uses the Apache Commons HTTP Client to connect to solr.
String url = "http://localhost:8983/solr";
/*
CommonsHttpSolrServer is thread-safe and if you are using the following constructor,
you *MUST* re-use the same instance for all requests. If instances are created on
the fly, it can cause a connection leak. The recommended practice is to keep a
static instance of CommonsHttpSolrServer per solr server url and share it for all requests.
See https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SOLR-861 for more details
*/
SolrServer server = new CommonsHttpSolrServer( url );
Setting XMLResponseParser
SolrJ uses a binary format as the default format now. For users with Solr 1.2 or older versions of Solr 1.3 must explicitly ask SolrJ to use XML format.
server.setParser(new XMLResponseParser());
Changing other Connection Settings
CommonsHttpSolrServer allows setting connection properties.
String url = "http://localhost:8983/solr" CommonsHttpSolrServer server = new CommonsHttpSolrServer( url ); server.setSoTimeout(1000); // socket read timeout server.setConnectionTimeout(100); server.setDefaultMaxConnectionsPerHost(100); server.setMaxTotalConnections(100); server.setFollowRedirects(false); // defaults to false // allowCompression defaults to false. // Server side must support gzip or deflate for this to have any effect. server.setAllowCompression(true); server.setMaxRetries(1); // defaults to 0. > 1 not recommended.
EmbeddedSolrServer
The EmbeddedSolrServer provides the same interface without requiring an HTTP connection.
// Note that the following property could be set through JVM level arguments too
System.setProperty("solr.solr.home", "/home/shalinsmangar/work/oss/branch-1.3/example/solr");
CoreContainer.Initializer initializer = new CoreContainer.Initializer();
CoreContainer coreContainer = initializer.initialize();
EmbeddedSolrServer server = new EmbeddedSolrServer(coreContainer, "");
If you want to use MultiCore features, then you should use this:
File home = new File( "/path/to/solr/home" );
File f = new File( home, "solr.xml" );
CoreContainer container = new CoreContainer();
container.load( "/path/to/solr/home", f );
EmbeddedSolrServer server = new EmbeddedSolrServer( container, "core name as defined in solr.xml" );
...
If you need to use solr in an embedded application, this is the recommended approach. It allows you to work with the same interface whether or not you have access to HTTP.
Note -- EmbeddedSolrServer works only with handlers registered in solrconfig.xml. A RequestHandler must be mapped to /update for a request to /update to function.
Usage
Solrj is designed as an extendable framework to pass SolrRequest to the SolrServer and return a SolrResponse.
For simplicity, the most common commands are modeled in the SolrServer:
Adding Data to Solr
-
Get an instance of server first
SolrServer server = getSolrServer();
The getSolrServer() method body can be as follows if you use a remote server,
public SolrServer getSolrServer(){
//the instance can be reused
return new CommonsHttpSolrServer();
}
if it is a local server use the following,
public SolrServer getSolrServer(){
//the instance can be reused
return new EmbeddedSolrServer();
}
-
If you wish to clean up the index before adding data do this
server.deleteByQuery( "*:*" );// delete everything!
-
Construct a document
SolrInputDocument doc1 = new SolrInputDocument();
doc1.addField( "id", "id1", 1.0f );
doc1.addField( "name", "doc1", 1.0f );
doc1.addField( "price", 10 );
-
Construct another document. Each document can be independently be added but it is more efficient to do a batch update. Every call to SolrServer is an Http Call (This is not true for EmbeddedSolrServer).
SolrInputDocument doc2 = new SolrInputDocument();
doc2.addField( "id", "id2", 1.0f );
doc2.addField( "name", "doc2", 1.0f );
doc2.addField( "price", 20 );
-
Create a collection of documents
Collection<SolrInputDocument> docs = new ArrayList<SolrInputDocument>();
docs.add( doc1 );
docs.add( doc2 );
-
Add the documents to Solr
server.add( docs );
-
Do a commit
server.commit();
-
To immediately commit after adding documents, you could use:
UpdateRequest req = new UpdateRequest(); req.setAction( UpdateRequest.ACTION.COMMIT, false, false ); req.add( docs ); UpdateResponse rsp = req.process( server );
Streaming documents for an update
This is the most optimal way of updating all your docs in one http request.
CommonsHttpSolrServer server = new CommonsHttpSolrServer();
Iterator<SolrInputDocument> iter = new Iterator<SolrInputDocument>(){
public boolean hasNext() {
boolean result ;
// set the result to true false to say if you have more documensts
return result;
}
public SolrInputDocument next() {
SolrInputDocument result = null;
// construct a new document here and set it to result
return result;
}
};
server.add(iter);
you may also use the addBeans(Iterator<?> beansIter) method to write pojos
Directly adding POJOs to Solr
-
Create a Java bean with annotations. The @Field annotation can be applied to a field or a setter method. If the field name is different from the bean field name give the aliased name in the annotation itself as shown in the categories field.
import org.apache.solr.client.solrj.beans.Field;
public class Item {
@Field
String id;
@Field("cat")
String[] categories;
@Field
List<String> features;
}
The @Field annotation can be applied on setter methods as well example:
@Field("cat")
public void setCategory(String[] c){
this.categories = c;
}
There should be a corresponding getter method (without annotation) for reading attributes
-
Get an instance of server
SolrServer server = getSolrServer();
-
Create the bean instances
Item item = new Item();
item.id = "one";
item.categories = new String[] { "aaa", "bbb", "ccc" };
-
Add to Solr
server.addBean(item);
-
Adding multiple beans together
List<Item> beans ; //add Item objects to the list server.addBeans(beans);
Note -- Reuse the instance of SolrServer if you are using this feature (for performance )
Setting the RequestWriter
Solr1.4 SolrJ lets you upload content in XML and Binary format. Default is set to be XML. Use the following to upload using Binary format. this is the same format which SolrJ uses to fetch results.
server.setRequestWriter(new BinaryRequestWriter());
Reading Data from Solr
-
Get an instance of server first
SolrServer server = getSolrServer();
-
Construct a SolrQuery
SolrQuery query = new SolrQuery();
query.setQuery( "*:*" );
query.addSortField( "price", SolrQuery.ORDER.asc );
-
Query the server
QueryResponse rsp = server.query( query );
-
Get the results
SolrDocumentList docs = rsp.getResults();
-
To read Documents as beans, the bean must be annotated as given in the example.
List<Item> beans = rsp.getBeans(Item.class);
Advanced usage
SolrJ provides a APIs to create queries instead of hand coding the query . Following is an example of a faceted query.
SolrServer server = getSolrServer();
SolrQuery solrQuery = new SolrQuery().
setQuery("ipod").
setFacet(true).
setFacetMinCount(1).
setFacetLimit(8).
addFacetField("category").
addFacetField("inStock");
QueryResponse rsp = server.query(solrQuery);
All the setter/add methods return its instance . Hence these calls can be chained
Highlighting
Highlighting parameters are set like other common parameters.
SolrQuery query = new SolrQuery();
query.setQuery("foo");
query.setHighlight(true).setHighlightSnippets(1); //set other params as needed
query.setParam("hl.fl", "content");
QueryResponse queryResponse = getSolrServer().query(query);
Then to get back the highlight results you need something like this:
Iterator<SolrDocument> iter = queryResponse.getResults();
while (iter.hasNext()) {
SolrDocument resultDoc = iter.next();
String content = (String) resultDoc.getFieldValue("content"));
String id = (String) resultDoc.getFieldValue("id"); //id is the uniqueKey field
if (queryResponse.getHighlighting().get(id) != null) {
List<String> highightSnippets = queryResponse.getHighlighting().get(id).get("content");
}
}
Setting the classpath
Ant
SolrJ is a part of the 1.3.0 release. The jars required in the classpath for SolrJ are,
-
commons-io-1.3.1.jar
-
commons-httpclient-3.1.jar
-
commons-codec-1.3.jar
-
commons-logging-1.0.4.jar
-
apache-solr-common-1.3.0.jar
-
apache-solr-solrj-1.3.0.jar
If you are using an Solr 1.2, add the stax jars too. Do not forget to set the XML parser
-
geronimo-stax-api_1.0_spec-1.0.1.jar
-
wstx-asl-3.2.7.jar
-
stax-utils.jar
The above jars can be found in the dist/solrj-lib directory of the Solr 1.3.0 download.
Maven
Solrj is available in the official Maven repository. Add the following dependency to your pom.xml to use SolrJ
<dependency>
<artifactId>solr-solrj</artifactId>
<groupId>org.apache.solr</groupId>
<version>1.3.0</version>
<type>jar</type>
<scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>
If you need to use the EmbeddedSolrServer, you need to add the solr-core dependency too.
<dependency>
<artifactId>solr-core</artifactId>
<groupId>org.apache.solr</groupId>
<version>1.3.0</version>
<type>jar</type>
<scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>