PHP and Solr

They love to work toghether!

Who am I

PHP and Solr

What is Solr?

Key features

Who use it?

Why should I use it?

Why should I use it with PHP?

Getting Started

We will take a look on how to deploy a simple Solr instance using the bundled examples

System Requirements

  1. JRE/JDK 1.6 or Later
  2. A servlet container such as Tomcat, Jetty, or Resin (I prefer Jetty, a Jetty Servlet container is also bundled in the examples directory)

Download

  1. Download Solr from one of its mirrors.
    http://lucene.apache.org/solr/mirrors-solr-latest-redir.html
  2. Untar it
    tar -xvf solr-4.5.1.tgz
  3. cd into the examples folder
    cd solr-nightly/example/

Try it

Solr can run in any Java Servlet container, in this example we will use a bundled Jetty servlet container.

  1. Start Solr
    java -jar start.jar
  2. Go to
    http://yourhost:8983/solr
  3. Your Solr instance is ready

Me gusta

Ok, thank you

but now, what should I do with my new Solr instance?

Create a new Core

cd downloaded-solr/example/solr
This is how the directory should look like

-rw-r--r--@ 1 fontanalorenzo  staff   2.4K 12 Sep 18:10 README.txt
drwxr-xr-x@ 2 fontanalorenzo  staff    68B 12 Sep 18:10 bin
drwxr-xr-x@ 5 fontanalorenzo  staff   170B 12 Sep 18:10 collection1
-rw-r--r--@ 1 fontanalorenzo  staff   1.7K 12 Sep 18:10 solr.xml
-rw-r--r--@ 1 fontanalorenzo  staff   501B 12 Sep 18:10 zoo.cfg

copy the default core to make your own

cp collection1 my-core
cd my-core

core.properties

Edit the core.properties file changing the core name and telling Solr to spend all the time necessary to fully load the cores on startup. A list of possible cases can be found here.

name=my-core
loadOnStartup=true
transient=false

The Conf folder

As the name suggest, the conf folder contains the configuration files. Fortunatelly (or unfortunatelly ? ) they are just xml files.

The most important are:

schema.xml example

Solr stores given pieces of raw data into one or more fields in its index

The schema.xml file contains all of the details about which fields your documents can contain, and how those fields should be dealt with when adding documents to the index, or when querying those fields.

It can contain: fields, copyfields, dynamicfields and fields types

solrconfig.xml example

solrconfig.xml is the file that contains most of the parameters for configuring Solr itself. One of the most important configuration in this file is the DIH (data import handler) configuration

<requestHandler name="/dataimport"
                class="solr.handler.dataimport.DataImportHandler">
    <lst name="defaults">
        <str name="config">my_database.xml</str>
    </lst>
</requestHandler>

my_database.xml example

my_database.xml is the config file we previously declared in the solrconfig.xml, this file configure how to take data and how to map them with fields of the document. In our case, data are coming from a mysql database, and to retrieve data we have to do some entity queries, each entity query refers to the query that is used when doing a full import.

From the documentation:

  1. The query gives the data needed to populate fields of the Solr document in full-import
  2. The deltaImportQuery gives the data needed to populate fields when running a delta-import
  3. The deltaQuery gives the primary keys of the current entity which have changes since the last index time

Now lets see some PHP!

Solarium: Intro

Solarium is the most known PHP (5.3 +) Solr Client, a full list of its features can be found here. The features that I appreciate more than others are

Solarium: Installation

In composer.json add

{
  "require": {
      "solarium/solarium": "3.1.*"
  }
}

And then

composer update

Solarium: Solr endpoint config

$config = array(
    'endpoint' => array(
        'localhost' => array(
            'host' => 'yourhost,
            'port' => 8983,
            'path' => '/solr/',
        )
    )
);

Solarium: A select query example

/* create a client instance */
$client = new Solarium_Client($config);

/* get a select query instance */
$query = $client->createSelect();

/* Set a query (all documents where name is renzo and email contains @gmail.com) */
$query->setQuery('name:renzo AND email:@gmail.com');

/* set start and rows param (comparable to SQL limit) using fluent interface */
$query->setStart(1)->setRows(20);

/* set fields to fetch (this overrides the default setting 'all fields') */
$query->setFields(array('id','name','surname', 'email'));

/* sort the results by id DESC */
$query->addSort('id', Solarium_Query_Select::SORT_DESC);

/* this executes the query and returns the result */
$resultset = $client->select($query);

/* total number of results found */
$numFound = $resultset->getNumFound();

Solarium: An example with facets

// create a client instance
$client = new Solarium\Client($config);

// get a select query instance
$query = $client->createSelect();

// get the facetset component
$facetSet = $query->getFacetSet();

// create a facet field instance and set options
$facetSet->createFacetField('type')->setField('type');

// this executes the query and returns the result
$resultset = $client->select($query);

// display facet counts
echo '<hr/>Facet counts for field "type":<br/>';
$facet = $resultset->getFacetSet()->getFacet('stock');
foreach($facet as $value => $count) {
    echo "{$value} [{$count}]<br/>"; // ex output: type name [100]
}

Framework integration

What happens if I'm on a ZF2 or Symfony 2 Application?

ZF2 Integration

There's a ZF2 module built around Solarium that allows you to connect Solr and your ZF2 application without headache.

The Ewgo/SolariumModule can be found here https://github.com/Ewgo/SolariumModule

It integrates with Zend Developer Tools and has an adapter for Zend\Paginator

ZF2 Integration: Installation

In composer.json add

{
  "require": {
      "ewgo/solarium-module": "1.0.2"
  }
}

and then

composer update

ZF2 Integration: Enable the module

In your application.config.php add the module

'modules' => array(
    //...
    'SolariumModule'
),

ZF2 Integration: Configuration

Configure your Solr endpoint

array(
    'solarium' => array(
        'endpoint' => array(
            'default' => array(
                'host' => 'yourhost',
                'port' => 8983,
                'path' => '/solr',
                'core' => 'default',
                'timeout' => 5
            )
        )
    )
)

ZF2 Integration: Usage

Solarium is now available in the service locator via the solarium alias

$client = $serviceLocator->get('solarium');

// From here on, it's all the same as solarium
$query = $client->createSelect();
$resultset = $client->execute($query);

ZF2 Integration: Paginate results

This example shows how to use the built-in Zend\Paginator adapter

use \EwgoSolarium\Paginator\Adapter\SolariumPaginator;

$paginator = new \Zend\Paginator\Paginator(
    new SolariumPaginator($client, $query)
);
$paginator->setCurrentPageNumber($page);
$paginator->setItemCountPerPage($countPerPage);

Symfony 2 Integration

On the other hand, for Symfony 2 there's a bundle from Nelmio named NelmioSolariumBundle.

The NelmioSolariumBundle can be found here https://github.com/nelmio/NelmioSolariumBundle

Symfony 2 Integration: Installation

In composer.json add

{
    "require": {
        "nelmio/solarium-bundle": "2.*"
    }
}

and then

composer update

Symfony 2 Integration: Enable the bundle

Add the bundle to the AppKernel.php

$bundles = array(
    ...
    new Nelmio\SolariumBundle\NelmioSolariumBundle(),
    ...
);

Symfony 2 Integration: Configuration

Configure your Solr endpoint

nelmio_solarium:
    endpoints:
        default:
            host: yourhost
            port: 8983
            path: /solr
            core: default
            timeout: 5
    clients:
        default:
            endpoints: [default]

Symfony 2 Integration: Usage

Solarium is accessible via the solarium.client alias.

$client = $this->get('solarium.client');

// From here on, it's all the same as solarium
$select = $client->createSelect();
$select->setQuery('foo');
$results = $client->select($select);

If you configured also another endpoint you will have aliases like this one

$client = $this->get('solarium.client.newEndpointName');

PHP and Solr

Questions?

Sitography

Lorenzo Fontana