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Last Reviewed: February 28, 2022

Using Opensolr With Pantheon Sites

Learn how to create and configure Opensolr with Solr for advanced search indexing features for your Drupal sites.

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Overview

Apache Solr is a system for indexing and searching site content. Pantheon provides Apache Solr as a service that works well for the majority of sites on the platform. No permission or action is required from Pantheon to use Solr.

Currently, Pantheon provides Apache Solr v3.6 and v8.0 as a service for all plans except the Basic plan.

However, if you are looking for additional features for more advanced use cases, you may want to consider an external Solr service.

The Opensolr service offers a number of features including:

  • Smart full-text search
  • Faceting
  • Similarity search
  • PDF and document search with opensolr Tika
  • JTS Polygonal geo-spatial search
  • REST-like API

This document covers Opensolr configuration for Drupal sites. For WordPress-Opensolr integration, see Opensolr's WPSolr Integration tutorial.

Before You Begin

Make sure you have already enabled:

  • Drupal 7: the Apache Solr Search module
  • Drupal (Latest Version): the Search API Solr module using Composer, which is required by Search API Solr to manage dependencies.

Create a New Index

  1. Register at Opensolr.com and log in to your Opensolr account.

  2. Click My Indexes to display the drop-down menu.

  3. Click Add New.

The Select Your Opensolr Environment page is displayed and you can either choose an existing environment or request a new environment.

Set Up the Index

To create your index:

  1. Open the Version list on the left navigation panel, and select the environment's Solr version.

  2. Select your preferred region.

  3. Enter a name for your index in the Index Name field. The name must be unique and cannot already exist.

  4. Fill out the appropriate fields, and then click Add Index to create your index. You will then see a card on your dashboard for your index.

  5. Click the index name to go to the Overview page for your index.

  6. Copy the following information before moving forward:

    • Port
    • Path
    • Hostname
    • Connection URL

Configure the Solr Module

Configure Drupal’s Apache Solr Module (Drupal 7)

To get your index working with a Drupal site. Set configuration options in the Apache Solr module.

  1. Access the Apache Solr Settings page by appending the following to your site’s URL:

    admin/config/search/apachesolr/settings/solr/edit?destination=admin/config/search/apachesolr/settings/solr

  2. Provide the following information to configure Apache Solr:

    • ServerURL: Paste the Connection URL from Opensolr.
    • Description: Briefly describe your index.

  3. Click Save when you are finished.

Warning
A schema must be pushed in each environment (Dev/Test/Live).

Test Your New Solr Connection

Now that you have created the index and configured the ApacheSolr Drupal module to point to the new index, test the connection to ensure Apache Solr can communicate with the Opensolr index.

  1. Go to admin/config/search/apachesolr/settings

  2. Click your index.

  3. Click Test Connection.

If Drupal returns a message such as “Your site has contacted the Apache Solr server”, you have successfully set up your index. If not, go back and retry the configuration steps above.

Configure Drupal’s Search API Solr and Search API Opensolr Modules (Drupal Latest Version)

Setup Opensolr Connection in Search API Opensolr

  1. Navigate to the OpenSolrConfig Form.

  2. Enter your Opensolr API credentials. You must provide a login name and secret key. A secret key is provided in the drop-down menu after you configure your credentials.

To setup a secret key, the API key must be retrieved from the Opensolr dashboard.

Warning

Do not click Generate a New API Key in the Opensolr dashboard. It does not confirm the action and immediately changes the API key for the account, which impacts the indexes of all the environments. If you clicked Generate a New API Key , you must add the newly generated API key to the secret key storage.

Setting up Opensolr server in Drupal’s Search API Solr

  1. Go to the Search API Configuration page, /admin/config/search/search-api to create a new server.

  2. Click Add server.

  3. Test that you've successfully established connection to Opensolr by selecting Solr as a back-end, then select Opensolr with Basic Auth as the authentication method. You will automatically be presented with a drop-down menu of all your existing indexes on Opensolr.

Set up Opensolr index in Drupal’s Search API Solr

You can set up an index through the Search API Configuration page (/admin/config/search/search-api).

Test Your New Solr Connection

Now that you have created the server and index, and configured the Search API Opensolr and Search API Solr Drupal module, test the connection and ensure your site can communicate with the Opensolr index.

  1. Go to /admin/config/search/search-api

  2. Click your index. Your connection is successful if the indexing works.

Customize Your Configuration

You can create custom configurations or manually edit your:

  • Index
  • Synonyms list
  • Stop words

  1. Go to your Opensolr Search Index's Tools page.

  2. Click Configuration, then select the configuration file you want to edit.

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