silverstripe-fulltextsearch/docs/en/02_setup.md

Setup

The FulltextSearch module includes support for connecting to Solr.

It works with Solr in multi-core mode. It needs to be able to update Solr configuration files, and has modes for doing so by direct file access (when Solr shares a server with SilverStripe) and by WebDAV (when it's on a different server).

See the helpful Solr Tutorial, for more on cores and querying.

Requirements

Since Solr is Java based, it requires Java 1.5 or greater installed.

When you're installing it yourself, it also requires a servlet container such as Tomcat, Jetty, or Resin. For development testing there is a standalone version that comes bundled with Jetty (see Installing Solr below).

See the official Solr installation docs for more information.

Note that these requirements are for the Solr server environment, which doesn't have to be the same physical machine as the SilverStripe webhost.

Installing Solr

Local installation

If you'll be running Solr on the same machine as your SilverStripe installation, and the quick start script doesn't suit your needs, you can use the fulltextsearch-localsolr module. This can also be useful as a development dependency. You can bring it in via composer (use require-dev if you plan to install Solr remotely in Production):

composer require silverstripe/fulltextsearch-localsolr

Once installed, start the server via CLI:

cd fulltextsearch-localsolr/server
java -jar start.jar

Then configure the module to use file mode with the following configuration in your app/_config.php, making sure that the path directory is writeable by the user that started the server (above):

use SilverStripe\FullTextSearch\Solr\Solr;

Solr::configure_server([
    'host' => 'localhost',
    'indexstore' => [
        'mode' => 'file',
        'path' => BASE_PATH . '/.solr'
    ]
]);

Remote installation

Alternatively, it can be beneficial to keep the Solr service contained on its own infrastructure, for performance and security reasons. The Common Web Platform (CWP) uses Solr in this manner. To do so, you should install the dependencies on the remote server, and then configure the module to use the webdav mode like so:

use SilverStripe\FullTextSearch\Solr\Solr;

Solr::configure_server([
    'host' => 'remotesolrserver.com', // IP address or hostname
    'indexstore' => [
        'mode' => 'webdav',
        'path' => BASE_PATH . '/webdav',
    ]
]);

Check all the available configuration options to fine-tune the module to work with your desired setup.

This will mean that all configuration files, and the indexes themselves, are stored remotely.

Solr admin

Solr provides an administration interface with a GUI to allow you to get at the finer details of your cores and configuration. You can access it at example.com:<SOLR_PORT>/<SOLR_PATH>/#/ on a local installation (usually example.com:8983/solr/#/).

There you can access logging, run raw queries against your stored indexes, and get some basic performance metrics. Additionally, you can perform more drastic changes, such as dropping and reloading cores.

For a comprehensive look at the Solr admin interface, read the user guide for Solr 4.10