1. Solr Facets in Alfresco 4
Dan Tuffery

2. Who Am I? About Me Senior Software Engineer at Ixxus
Working with Alfresco & Solr for 2.5 years
Alfresco Certified Engineer and Solr Certified
Winner of Alfresco’s 2012 Dashlet Challenge

3. Agenda Talk Outline Alfresco Solr facets demonstration
Solr facets overview
Walkthrough of implementation
Plans for the module

4. Alfresco Solr Facets Demonstration

5. Solr Facets Overview 3 Different flavours of facets Field facets
Date facets
Number range facets

6. Indexing Facet Fields
Indexed
Not Tokenised
Not Stored

7. Facet Field Parameters facet = enables faceting
facet.field = the field that you want to facet on
facet.mincount = constraint count >= facet.mincount
facet.limit = limit the number of constraints that are displayed

8. Facet Field Parameters facet = enables faceting
facet.field = the field that you want to facet on
facet.mincount = constraint count >= facet.mincount
facet.limit = limit the number of constraints that are displayed
q=myfield:solr&facet=true&facet.field=myfield&facet.mincount= 1&facet.limit=20

9. Date Facet Parameters facet.date = name of date field
facet.date.start = start of the date range
facet.date.end = End of the date range
facet.date.gap = period of time in between each date range

10. Date Facet Parameters facet.date = name of date field
facet.date.start = start of the date range
facet.date.end = End of the date range
facet.date.gap = period of time in between each date range
q=myfield:solr&facet=true&facet.date=created&facet.limit=20 &facet.date.start= T00:00:00.0Z&facet.date.gap
=1MONTH&facet.date.end= T00:00:00.0Z

11. Solr Facets In Alfresco 4
What Needed To Be Done?

12. Alfresco’s Facet Implementation
Out Of The Box
Facet field POJO
Logic to add facet field params to Solr request URL
Facet results are mapped to JSON object

13. My Implementation Five Main Tasks
Add facets to Alfresco (Facet Manager)
Solution to add facets to search request
Solution to return facets in the search response
Modify search results page to display facets
Add support for filter queries

14. 1)Add Facets to Alfresco
Facet Manger
Tool in Admin Console
Based on current Tag Manager
Create, Read, Update and Delete facets
REST API in Alfresco (POST, GET, PUT, DELETE)
Custom content model – ix:facetField

15. 1)Add Facets to Alfresco
What facets to display
Content Type, Mime type, Property, Date
How the facet should be displayed
Display Name, Minimum Count, Limit
When the facet should be displayed
Individual Site, All Sites, Repository Search

16. Indexing Facet Fields in Alfresco
Best Practices
Indexed
Not Tokenised
Not Stored

17. Indexing Facet Fields in Alfresco
Best Practices
Indexed
Not Tokenised
Not Stored

18. Indexing Facet Fields in Alfresco
Best Practices
Indexed
Not Tokenised
Not Stored
Indexed Field Name
Indexed Value(s) @{
{en}new
{en}york @{
new
york @{
{en}New York @{
New York @{
enNew York

19. Search Flow of Execution OOTB

20. Search Flow of Execution

21. 2) Add Facets to Search Request
Search request sent from Share
search.lib.js
var queryDef = {
query: ftsQuery,
language: "fts-alfresco",
page: {maxItems: params.maxResults * 2},
templates: getQueryTemplate(),
defaultField: "keywords",
onerror: "no-results",
sort: sortColumns,
searchScope: searchScope,
siteId: params.siteId,
filterQueries: filterQueries };
nodes = search.query(queryDef);

22. 2) Add Facets to Search Request
Extended Search.java
String searchScope = (String)def.get("searchScope");
String siteId = (String)def.get("siteId"); ..
if(searchScope != null) {
List<FieldFacet> fieldFacets =
facetService.getFieldFacets(searchScope, siteId);
searchParameters.setFieldFacets(fieldFacets); }
results = this.services.getSearchService().query(searchParameters);

23. 2) Add Facets to Search Request
Extended SolrQueryHttpClient.java
Generates Solr Request URL
Add parameters (including facets) to URL
List<FieldFacet> fieldFacets = searchParameters.getFieldFacets();
for(FieldFacet facet : fieldFacets) {
url.append("&facet.field=" + facet.getField());
url.append("&facet.mincount=" + facet.getMinCount());,
url.append("&facet.limit=" + facet.getLimit()); }

24. 2) Add Facets to Search Request
Extended SolrQueryHttpClient.java
Generates Solr Request URL
Add parameters (including facets) to URL
List<FieldFacet> fieldFacets = searchParameters.getFieldFacets();
for(FieldFacet facet : fieldFacets) {
url.append("&facet.field=" + facet.getField());
url.append("&facet.mincount=" + facet.getMinCount());,
url.append("&facet.limit=" + facet.getLimit()); }

25. 3) Return Facets in Search Response
Results mapped to SolrJSONResultSet.java
Response returns set of ScriptNode objects
Collection<Object> set = new LinkedHashSet<Object>(results.length(), 1.0f); ..
//OOTB code to add scriptNodes to the set
if(searchParameters.getFieldFacets().size() > 0) {
List<FieldFacet> fieldFacets = sp.getFieldFacets();
for(FieldFacet facetField : fieldFacets) {
List<Pair<String, Integer>> facets =
((SolrJSONResultSet)results).getFieldFacet(facetField.getField());
set.add(new ScriptFacet(facetField, facets, getScope(), this.services)); }
return set;

26. 3) Return Facets in Search Response
ScriptFacet Implements Scopable
Represents a facet field and its properties
Constraint filter query is constructed here
public ScriptFacet(IxxusFieldFacet facetField, List<Pair<String, Integer>> facetList, Scriptable scope, ServiceRegistry services) {
this.services = services;
this.facetField = facetField;
this.scope = scope;
this.constraints = getFacetResults(facetList); }
public Boolean isFacet() {
return isFacet;

27. 3) Return Facets in Search Response
Back up to search.lib.js to process results
var results, i, j, facetResults;
for (i = 0, j = nodes.length; i < j; i++) {
if(nodes[i].isFacet) {
var facet = nodes[i];
if(facet.facetHasAnyHits) {
facetResults.push(facet); }
} else {//it is a ScriptNode object, so process it in the usual way ..
//OOTB code to add search results to results list
return ({
items: results,
facetItems: facetResults
});

28. 3) Return Facets in Search Response
search.get.json.ftl
"items": [
... ],
"facets": {
"facetDisplayName":"Location",
“constraints" :
"constraint": "San Jose (7)",
Jose" },
"constraint":"Berlin (4)", ] }

29. 4) Modify Search Results Page
Search Results page layout changed dynamically
Nested divs to display facet column

30. 4) Modify Search Results Page
search.js (YUI)
var facets = oFullResponse.facets, resultsContainer,
facetsDiv, results, body;
if(facets && facets.length > 0) {
resultsContainer = new Element(document.createElement("div"), {
id: “results-container"
}).addClass("results-container");
facetsDiv = new Element(document.createElement("div"), {
id: "facetsDiv"
}).addClass("search-facets");
Ixxus.search.solr.generateFacets(me, facets, facetsDiv);
body = new Element(Dom.get("body"));
results = new Element(Dom.get("results"));
results.addClass("results-right");
resultsContainer.appendChild(facetsDiv);
resultsContainer.appendChild(results);
body.appendChild(resultsContainer); }

31. 5) Add Support For Filter Queries
Each facet constraint is a link
Original search is executed + filter query/queries
Same flow of execution as facets
Filter queries added to the Solr request URL

32. 5) Add Support For Filter Queries
SolrQueryHttpClient.java
List<String> filterQueries = searchParameters.getFilterQueries();
for(String filterQuery : filterQueries) {
filterQuery = filterQuery.replace("{", "\\{");
filterQuery = filterQuery.replace("http", "http\\");
filterQuery = filterQuery.replace("}", "\\}");
filterQuery = filterQuery.replace(" ", "*");
filterQuery = filterQuery.replace("TO", " TO ");
url.append("&fq=").append(encoder.encode("{!lucene}" + filterQuery, "UTF8")); }

33. Module Plans Ixxus Solr Code has been contributed back to Alfresco
Alfresco Enterprise 4.2 (Spring 2013)
Maybe other community release before then

34. Module Plans TODO Number range facets Multi field faceting
Hierarchical faceting

35. Additional Information
Search Terms Dashlet
Uses faceting in Alfresco 4
Ixxus blog

36. Summary Easy and configurable way to add facet fields Solr facets
Field Facets
Date Facets
Support for filter queries

37. Questions?