Advanced development with eZ Find - part 3 : Leveraging the Solr syntax
Monday 05 July 2010 2:53:02 am
Here is the third part of a series of tutorials about eZ Find. At the end of this series, you will have been exposed all details on how it works, and be able to make an advanced usage, in various context, of this enterprise-grade search plug-in. This series will serve as a base for a talk on the subject at the eZ Conference 2010, in Berlin. As well as the Libre Software meeting.
Read the 1st and 2nd parts :
- Advanced development with eZ Find - part 1 : Datatypes in Solr and eZ Find
- Advanced development with eZ Find - part 2 : Indexing additional fields in Solr
Introduction
The previous and second post of this series described how to index additionnal fields in Solr, in order to leverage them using eZ Find's native syntaxe, of the form : 'mycontentclass/mycontentattribute/mycontentsubattribute'. This eZ Find-specific syntax is very comfortable, but not exclusive. It is indeed possible to mix the eZ Find-specific syntax and the Solr-specific syntax, like for example the field names ( 'attr_myfield_type' ) or logic operators ( AND, NOT, etc. ) .
- Yes, this is bad practice. An “interface” syntax is not made to be worked-around, this potentially endangering the lower layers' evolutivity, namely Solr.
- Yes, this can make development easier in some cases, or even be a life-saver in some complex situations
This post dives into concrete examples of how and when one can leverage Solr's syntax. The examples are simplified on purpose, for obvious educational reasons.
Pre-requisites and target population
This tutorial requires to know how to set up eZ Find. The online documentation describes the required operation in details, there : http://ez.no/doc/extensions/ez_find/2_2.
You should also read and understand the first and second part of this tutorial :
- Advanced development with eZ Find - part 1 : Datatypes in Solr and eZ Find
- Advanced development with eZ Find - part 2 : Indexing additional fields in Solr