Apache Solr – Facets Configuration

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Siva Prasad Rao Janapati — Leave a comment

In the previous post, we have seen, how to configure Apache data import handler to import the data from the database to Solr and performed some basic search related queries on that. In this post, we are going to see how to configure the facets and how we can filter the results based on the facets. Before going to configure facets, we will see answers for a couple of questions.

What is a facet?

A facet is a specific property extracted from the data. This might be a flat list that allows only one choice or it might be a hierarchical list. The combination of all facets and values is often called as facet taxonomy.

What is the importance of facets or guided navigation?

The answer to this will be explained with an example. Here, when I am searching for products in an e-commerce store, as an end user,

I want shoes
I want “Puma” shoes
I want 9 inches of shoes
I want white shoes

To get the search results with the above-specified criteria, without grouping or facets, finding 9 inches, white, puma shoes from thousands of shoes across the product catalog is very difficult. To make search enjoyable to the user, we need to provide facets to the user. From the facets, the user can find the group to filter the results and finds the shoes what he wants. So, proving the right facets to the user ultimately improves the user experience and increase the sales.

With Solr, we can configure date facets, range facets(for Price), normal field facets(like String, Text, etc). Now, in this example, we will configure Solr to provide facets on “Retailer name” and the “Sale Amount”. We can enable the facets by providing the configuration to the request handler or during query time, we can send query parameters.

The request handler configuration is given below.



 <!-- default values for query parameters -->
 
 explicit
 
 
 on
 retailerName
 1
 after
 salePrice
 0
 400
 100

Now, while querying the Solr, send “facet=true” query parameter. This tells Solr to send the facets as part of response. For example http:// < host > :<port>/solr/sampleCatalog/select?q=*%3A*&wt=xml&indent=true&facet=true

The search response for facets is given below.

As per the facets configuration, the response has facets on retailer name and sale price. Now, we will filter the search results for retailer “Red Start Diecast” by applying the filter query (fq=retailerName:”Red Start Diecast”) parameter. The mentioned retailer has 7 results associated. For example http:// < host > : <port>/solr/sampleCatalog/select?q=*%3A*&wt=xml&indent=true&facet=true&fq=retailerName:%22Red%20Start%20Diecast%22

The search response is given below.




0
82

true
true
*:*
xml
retailerName:"Red Start Diecast"


...




7






1
5
1

100.0
0.0
400.0
0

Now, we will find search results between 100 to 200 price range. With this price range, we should get 40 results. For example

http:// < host > :<port>/solr/sampleCatalog/select?q=*%3A*&wt=xml&indent=true&facet=true&fq=salePrice:[100%20TO%20199]

The search response is given below.




0
4

true
true
*:*
xml
salePrice:[100 TO 199]



...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...





5
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
2
2
2
1






40

100.0
0.0
400.0
0

About Siva Prasad Rao Janapati

Siva Janapati is an Architect with experience in building Cloud Native Microservices architectures, Reactive Systems, Large scale distributed systems, and Serverless Systems. Siva has hands-on in architecture, design, and implementation of scalable systems using Cloud, Java, Go lang, Apache Kafka, Apache Solr, Spring, Spring Boot, Lightbend reactive tech stack, APIGEE edge & on-premise and other open-source, proprietary technologies. Expertise working with and building RESTful, GraphQL APIs. He has successfully delivered multiple applications in retail, telco, and financial services domains. He manages the GitHub(https://github.com/2013techsmarts) where he put the source code of his work related to his blog posts.