"begins with" searches

[Bernadette Houghton]

We need to offer "begins with" type searches, e.g. a search for "surname, f" 
will retrieve "surname, firstname", "surname, f", "surname fm" etc.

Ideally, the user would be able to enter something like "surname f*".

However, wildcards don't work on phrase searches, nor do range searches.

Any suggestions as to how best to search for "begins with" phrases; or, how to 
best configure solr to support such searches?

TIA
Bernadette Houghton, Library Business Applications Developer
Deakin University Geelong Victoria 3217 Australia.
Phone: 03 5227 8230 International: +61 3 5227 8230
Fax: 03 5227 8000 International: +61 3 5227 8000
MSN: bern_hough...@hotmail.com
Email: 
bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au
Website: http://www.deakin.edu.au
Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code 00113B (Vic)

Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the named 
addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction or storage 
of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received this email in 
error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and advise the sender 
by return email or telephone.
Deakin University does not warrant that this email and any attachments are 
error or virus free

Re: "begins with" searches

[Avlesh Singh]

Read up of setting-up these kind searches here -
http://www.lucidimagination.com/blog/2009/09/08/auto-suggest-from-popular-queries-using-edgengrams/

Cheers
Avlesh

On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Bernadette Houghton <
bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au> wrote:

> We need to offer "begins with" type searches, e.g. a search for "surname,
> f" will retrieve "surname, firstname", "surname, f", "surname fm" etc.
>
> Ideally, the user would be able to enter something like "surname f*".
>
> However, wildcards don't work on phrase searches, nor do range searches.
>
> Any suggestions as to how best to search for "begins with" phrases; or, how
> to best configure solr to support such searches?
>
> TIA
> Bernadette Houghton, Library Business Applications Developer
> Deakin University Geelong Victoria 3217 Australia.
> Phone: 03 5227 8230 International: +61 3 5227 8230
> Fax: 03 5227 8000 International: +61 3 5227 8000
> MSN: bern_hough...@hotmail.com
> Email: bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au>
> Website: http://www.deakin.edu.au
> Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code 00113B
> (Vic)
>
> Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the
> named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction or
> storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received this
> email in error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and advise
> the sender by return email or telephone.
> Deakin University does not warrant that this email and any attachments are
> error or virus free
>
>

Re: "begins with" searches

[Gerald Snyder]

Are you using the field name suffixes like Blacklight?xxx_text, 
_xxx_facet, xxx_string?   With the xxx_string field you can request 
"begins with" search, but you may need some different search term 
normalization than with a _text search. 



Gerald Snyder
Florida Center for Library Automation


Bernadette Houghton wrote:

We need to offer "begins with" type searches, e.g. a search for "surname, f" will retrieve "surname, 
firstname", "surname, f", "surname fm" etc.

Ideally, the user would be able to enter something like "surname f*".

However, wildcards don't work on phrase searches, nor do range searches.

Any suggestions as to how best to search for "begins with" phrases; or, how to 
best configure solr to support such searches?

TIA
Bernadette Houghton, Library Business Applications Developer
Deakin University Geelong Victoria 3217 Australia.
Phone: 03 5227 8230 International: +61 3 5227 8230
Fax: 03 5227 8000 International: +61 3 5227 8000
MSN: bern_hough...@hotmail.com
Email: 
bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au
Website: http://www.deakin.edu.au
Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code 00113B (Vic)

Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the named 
addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction or storage 
of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received this email in 
error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and advise the sender 
by return email or telephone.
Deakin University does not warrant that this email and any attachments are 
error or virus free


  

RE: "begins with" searches

[Bernadette Houghton]

Thanks for this suggestion (thanks Gerald also: no, we're not using 
BlackLight-type prefixes).

I've set up an edgytext fieldType in schema.xml thus -


 
   
   
   
 
 
   
   
 


And defined a field name thus -



The results are mixed -

* searches such as "surname, f" and "surname, fre" (with quotations and commas) 
work well, retrieving "surname, f", "surname, Fred", "surname, Frederick" etc 
etc
* searches such as the above but without quotations don't work too well as they 
get parsed as author_mt:surname + author_mt:firstname, with solr reading the 
query as "author beginning with surname AND author beginning with firstname", 
which yields nil results. 

Is there an analyser that will strip the whitespace out altogether? Or another 
alternative?

bern

-Original Message-
From: Avlesh Singh [mailto:avl...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, 26 October 2009 6:32 PM
To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
Subject: Re: "begins with" searches

Read up of setting-up these kind searches here -
http://www.lucidimagination.com/blog/2009/09/08/auto-suggest-from-popular-queries-using-edgengrams/

Cheers
Avlesh

On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Bernadette Houghton <
bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au> wrote:

> We need to offer "begins with" type searches, e.g. a search for "surname,
> f" will retrieve "surname, firstname", "surname, f", "surname fm" etc.
>
> Ideally, the user would be able to enter something like "surname f*".
>
> However, wildcards don't work on phrase searches, nor do range searches.
>
> Any suggestions as to how best to search for "begins with" phrases; or, how
> to best configure solr to support such searches?
>
> TIA
> Bernadette Houghton, Library Business Applications Developer
> Deakin University Geelong Victoria 3217 Australia.
> Phone: 03 5227 8230 International: +61 3 5227 8230
> Fax: 03 5227 8000 International: +61 3 5227 8000
> MSN: bern_hough...@hotmail.com
> Email: bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au>
> Website: http://www.deakin.edu.au
> <http://www.deakin.edu.au/>Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code 00113B
> (Vic)
>
> Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the
> named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction or
> storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received this
> email in error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and advise
> the sender by return email or telephone.
> Deakin University does not warrant that this email and any attachments are
> error or virus free
>
>

Re: "begins with" searches

[Avlesh Singh]

You are right about the parsing of query terms without a double quote
(solrQueryParser's defaultOperator has to be "AND" in your case). For the
problem at hand, two things -

   1. Do you have any reason for not doing a PhraseQuery (query terms
   enclosed in double quotes) on your "edgytext" field? If not then you can
   always enclose your query in double quotes to get expected "begins with"
   matches.
   2. You can always "escape" your query string before passing to Solr; and
   you wouldn't need to pass your query term in double quotes. For exapmle,
   search for the query string - surname, fre when "escaped" would be converted
   into surname,\+fre thereby asking Solr to treat this as a single query term.
   For more details -
   
http://lucene.apache.org/java/2_3_2/queryparsersyntax.html#Escaping%20Special%20Characters.
   If you use SolrJ, there is a ClientUtils class somewhere in the package
   which has helper functions to achieve query escaping.

Cheers
Avlesh

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 9:22 AM, Bernadette Houghton <
bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au> wrote:

> Thanks for this suggestion (thanks Gerald also: no, we're not using
> BlackLight-type prefixes).
>
> I've set up an edgytext fieldType in schema.xml thus -
>
>  positionIncrementGap="100">
>  
>   
>   
>maxGramSize="25" />
>  
>  
>   
>   
>  
> 
>
> And defined a field name thus -
>
>   stored="true" multiValued="true"/>
>
> The results are mixed -
>
> * searches such as "surname, f" and "surname, fre" (with quotations and
> commas) work well, retrieving "surname, f", "surname, Fred", "surname,
> Frederick" etc etc
> * searches such as the above but without quotations don't work too well as
> they get parsed as author_mt:surname + author_mt:firstname, with solr
> reading the query as "author beginning with surname AND author beginning
> with firstname", which yields nil results.
>
> Is there an analyser that will strip the whitespace out altogether? Or
> another alternative?
>
> bern
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Avlesh Singh [mailto:avl...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, 26 October 2009 6:32 PM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Re: "begins with" searches
>
> Read up of setting-up these kind searches here -
>
> http://www.lucidimagination.com/blog/2009/09/08/auto-suggest-from-popular-queries-using-edgengrams/
>
> Cheers
> Avlesh
>
> On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Bernadette Houghton <
> bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au> wrote:
>
> > We need to offer "begins with" type searches, e.g. a search for "surname,
> > f" will retrieve "surname, firstname", "surname, f", "surname fm" etc.
> >
> > Ideally, the user would be able to enter something like "surname f*".
> >
> > However, wildcards don't work on phrase searches, nor do range searches.
> >
> > Any suggestions as to how best to search for "begins with" phrases; or,
> how
> > to best configure solr to support such searches?
> >
> > TIA
> > Bernadette Houghton, Library Business Applications Developer
> > Deakin University Geelong Victoria 3217 Australia.
> > Phone: 03 5227 8230 International: +61 3 5227 8230
> > Fax: 03 5227 8000 International: +61 3 5227 8000
> > MSN: bern_hough...@hotmail.com
> > Email: bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au > bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au>
> > Website: http://www.deakin.edu.au
> > <http://www.deakin.edu.au/>Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code 00113B
> > (Vic)
> >
> > Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the
> > named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction
> or
> > storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received
> this
> > email in error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and
> advise
> > the sender by return email or telephone.
> > Deakin University does not warrant that this email and any attachments
> are
> > error or virus free
> >
> >
>

RE: "begins with" searches

[Bernadette Houghton]

Thanks Avlesh. The issue with not doing a phrase query on my "edgytext" field 
was that my parent application was adding an escape character to the quotation 
marks, and I was hoping to fix (or rather, work around) at the solr end to save 
maintenance overhead. But I've done a hack in the parent application to remove 
those escape chars, and all is working well in that respect.

My next issue relates to how to get the results of the author field come up in 
a search across all fields. For example, a search on author:"Houghton, B" 
(which uses the edgytext) yields 16 documents, but a search on all:"Houghton, 
B" (which doesn't) yields only 9. I thought the solution should be  but that doesn't do the trick. 

Thanks!

bern
-Original Message-
From: Avlesh Singh [mailto:avl...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, 27 October 2009 5:54 PM
To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
Subject: Re: "begins with" searches

You are right about the parsing of query terms without a double quote
(solrQueryParser's defaultOperator has to be "AND" in your case). For the
problem at hand, two things -

   1. Do you have any reason for not doing a PhraseQuery (query terms
   enclosed in double quotes) on your "edgytext" field? If not then you can
   always enclose your query in double quotes to get expected "begins with"
   matches.
   2. You can always "escape" your query string before passing to Solr; and
   you wouldn't need to pass your query term in double quotes. For exapmle,
   search for the query string - surname, fre when "escaped" would be converted
   into surname,\+fre thereby asking Solr to treat this as a single query term.
   For more details -
   
http://lucene.apache.org/java/2_3_2/queryparsersyntax.html#Escaping%20Special%20Characters.
   If you use SolrJ, there is a ClientUtils class somewhere in the package
   which has helper functions to achieve query escaping.

Cheers
Avlesh

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 9:22 AM, Bernadette Houghton <
bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au> wrote:

> Thanks for this suggestion (thanks Gerald also: no, we're not using
> BlackLight-type prefixes).
>
> I've set up an edgytext fieldType in schema.xml thus -
>
>  positionIncrementGap="100">
>  
>   
>   
>maxGramSize="25" />
>  
>  
>   
>   
>  
> 
>
> And defined a field name thus -
>
>   stored="true" multiValued="true"/>
>
> The results are mixed -
>
> * searches such as "surname, f" and "surname, fre" (with quotations and
> commas) work well, retrieving "surname, f", "surname, Fred", "surname,
> Frederick" etc etc
> * searches such as the above but without quotations don't work too well as
> they get parsed as author_mt:surname + author_mt:firstname, with solr
> reading the query as "author beginning with surname AND author beginning
> with firstname", which yields nil results.
>
> Is there an analyser that will strip the whitespace out altogether? Or
> another alternative?
>
> bern
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Avlesh Singh [mailto:avl...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, 26 October 2009 6:32 PM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Re: "begins with" searches
>
> Read up of setting-up these kind searches here -
>
> http://www.lucidimagination.com/blog/2009/09/08/auto-suggest-from-popular-queries-using-edgengrams/
>
> Cheers
> Avlesh
>
> On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Bernadette Houghton <
> bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au> wrote:
>
> > We need to offer "begins with" type searches, e.g. a search for "surname,
> > f" will retrieve "surname, firstname", "surname, f", "surname fm" etc.
> >
> > Ideally, the user would be able to enter something like "surname f*".
> >
> > However, wildcards don't work on phrase searches, nor do range searches.
> >
> > Any suggestions as to how best to search for "begins with" phrases; or,
> how
> > to best configure solr to support such searches?
> >
> > TIA
> > Bernadette Houghton, Library Business Applications Developer
> > Deakin University Geelong Victoria 3217 Australia.
> > Phone: 03 5227 8230 International: +61 3 5227 8230
> > Fax: 03 5227 8000 International: +61 3 5227 8000
> > MSN: bern_hough...@hotmail.com
> > Email: bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au > bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au>
> > Website: http://www.deakin.edu.au
> > <http://www.deakin.edu.au/>Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code 00113B
> > (Vic)
> >
> > Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the
> > named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction
> or
> > storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received
> this
> > email in error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and
> advise
> > the sender by return email or telephone.
> > Deakin University does not warrant that this email and any attachments
> are
> > error or virus free
> >
> >
>

Re: "begins with" searches

[Avlesh Singh]

>
> My next issue relates to how to get the results of the author field come up
> in a search across all fields. For example, a search on author:"Houghton, B"
> (which uses the edgytext) yields 16 documents, but a search on
> all:"Houghton, B" (which doesn't) yields only 9. I thought the solution
> should be  but that doesn't do
> the trick.
>

Do you have a field called "all"? How is it set up? Can you post the
schema.xml snippet relating to this field here?
 is supported for a dynamic field source.  should work for you as long as you have a
field called "all" defined in your schema. Moreover, for your specific use
case, the "all" field needs to be of type "edgytext".

Cheers
Avlesh

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Bernadette Houghton <
bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au> wrote:

> Thanks Avlesh. The issue with not doing a phrase query on my "edgytext"
> field was that my parent application was adding an escape character to the
> quotation marks, and I was hoping to fix (or rather, work around) at the
> solr end to save maintenance overhead. But I've done a hack in the parent
> application to remove those escape chars, and all is working well in that
> respect.
>
> My next issue relates to how to get the results of the author field come up
> in a search across all fields. For example, a search on author:"Houghton, B"
> (which uses the edgytext) yields 16 documents, but a search on
> all:"Houghton, B" (which doesn't) yields only 9. I thought the solution
> should be  but that doesn't do
> the trick.
>
> Thanks!
>
> bern
> -Original Message-
> From: Avlesh Singh [mailto:avl...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, 27 October 2009 5:54 PM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Re: "begins with" searches
>
> You are right about the parsing of query terms without a double quote
> (solrQueryParser's defaultOperator has to be "AND" in your case). For the
> problem at hand, two things -
>
>1. Do you have any reason for not doing a PhraseQuery (query terms
>enclosed in double quotes) on your "edgytext" field? If not then you can
>   always enclose your query in double quotes to get expected "begins with"
>   matches.
>2. You can always "escape" your query string before passing to Solr; and
>you wouldn't need to pass your query term in double quotes. For exapmle,
>   search for the query string - surname, fre when "escaped" would be
> converted
>   into surname,\+fre thereby asking Solr to treat this as a single query
> term.
>   For more details -
>
> http://lucene.apache.org/java/2_3_2/queryparsersyntax.html#Escaping%20Special%20Characters
> .
>   If you use SolrJ, there is a ClientUtils class somewhere in the package
>   which has helper functions to achieve query escaping.
>
> Cheers
> Avlesh
>
> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 9:22 AM, Bernadette Houghton <
> bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au> wrote:
>
> > Thanks for this suggestion (thanks Gerald also: no, we're not using
> > BlackLight-type prefixes).
> >
> > I've set up an edgytext fieldType in schema.xml thus -
> >
> >  > positionIncrementGap="100">
> >  
> >   
> >   
> >> maxGramSize="25" />
> >  
> >  
> >   
> >   
> >  
> > 
> >
> > And defined a field name thus -
> >
> >  >  stored="true" multiValued="true"/>
> >
> > The results are mixed -
> >
> > * searches such as "surname, f" and "surname, fre" (with quotations and
> > commas) work well, retrieving "surname, f", "surname, Fred", "surname,
> > Frederick" etc etc
> > * searches such as the above but without quotations don't work too well
> as
> > they get parsed as author_mt:surname + author_mt:firstname, with solr
> > reading the query as "author beginning with surname AND author beginning
> > with firstname", which yields nil results.
> >
> > Is there an analyser that will strip the whitespace out altogether? Or
> > another alternative?
> >
> > bern
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Avlesh Singh [mailto:avl...@gmail.com]
> > Sent: Monday, 26 October 2009 6:32 PM
> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> > Subject: Re: "begins with" searches
> >
> > Read up of setting-up these kind searches here -
> >
> >
> http://www.lucidimagination.com/blog/2009/09/08/auto-suggest-from-popular-queries-using-e

RE: "begins with" searches

[Bernadette Houghton]

Here's the "all" code snippets -

   
   
.
.

 all
.
.
   
   
   
   
   
   

It sounds from what you say that I'm going to need to change the field type to 
"edgytext". Which won't achieve the result I want, viz. the current "all" plus 
the edgytext. Any way to achieve this?

Thanks!
bern

-Original Message-
From: Avlesh Singh [mailto:avl...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, 28 October 2009 3:30 PM
To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
Subject: Re: "begins with" searches

>
> My next issue relates to how to get the results of the author field come up
> in a search across all fields. For example, a search on author:"Houghton, B"
> (which uses the edgytext) yields 16 documents, but a search on
> all:"Houghton, B" (which doesn't) yields only 9. I thought the solution
> should be  but that doesn't do
> the trick.
>

Do you have a field called "all"? How is it set up? Can you post the
schema.xml snippet relating to this field here?
 is supported for a dynamic field source.  should work for you as long as you have a
field called "all" defined in your schema. Moreover, for your specific use
case, the "all" field needs to be of type "edgytext".

Cheers
Avlesh

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Bernadette Houghton <
bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au> wrote:

> Thanks Avlesh. The issue with not doing a phrase query on my "edgytext"
> field was that my parent application was adding an escape character to the
> quotation marks, and I was hoping to fix (or rather, work around) at the
> solr end to save maintenance overhead. But I've done a hack in the parent
> application to remove those escape chars, and all is working well in that
> respect.
>
> My next issue relates to how to get the results of the author field come up
> in a search across all fields. For example, a search on author:"Houghton, B"
> (which uses the edgytext) yields 16 documents, but a search on
> all:"Houghton, B" (which doesn't) yields only 9. I thought the solution
> should be  but that doesn't do
> the trick.
>
> Thanks!
>
> bern
> -Original Message-
> From: Avlesh Singh [mailto:avl...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, 27 October 2009 5:54 PM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Re: "begins with" searches
>
> You are right about the parsing of query terms without a double quote
> (solrQueryParser's defaultOperator has to be "AND" in your case). For the
> problem at hand, two things -
>
>1. Do you have any reason for not doing a PhraseQuery (query terms
>enclosed in double quotes) on your "edgytext" field? If not then you can
>   always enclose your query in double quotes to get expected "begins with"
>   matches.
>2. You can always "escape" your query string before passing to Solr; and
>you wouldn't need to pass your query term in double quotes. For exapmle,
>   search for the query string - surname, fre when "escaped" would be
> converted
>   into surname,\+fre thereby asking Solr to treat this as a single query
> term.
>   For more details -
>
> http://lucene.apache.org/java/2_3_2/queryparsersyntax.html#Escaping%20Special%20Characters
> .
>   If you use SolrJ, there is a ClientUtils class somewhere in the package
>   which has helper functions to achieve query escaping.
>
> Cheers
> Avlesh
>
> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 9:22 AM, Bernadette Houghton <
> bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au> wrote:
>
> > Thanks for this suggestion (thanks Gerald also: no, we're not using
> > BlackLight-type prefixes).
> >
> > I've set up an edgytext fieldType in schema.xml thus -
> >
> >  > positionIncrementGap="100">
> >  
> >   
> >   
> >> maxGramSize="25" />
> >  
> >  
> >   
> >   
> >  
> > 
> >
> > And defined a field name thus -
> >
> >  >  stored="true" multiValued="true"/>
> >
> > The results are mixed -
> >
> > * searches such as "surname, f" and "surname, fre" (with quotations and
> > commas) work well, retrieving "surname, f", "surname, Fred", "surname,
> > Frederick" etc etc
> > * searches such as the above but without quotations don't work too well
> as
> > they get parsed as author_mt:surname + author_mt:firstname, with solr
> > reading the query as "author beginning with surname AND author beginning
> > with firstname", which yields nil results.
> >
> > Is there an analyser

Re: "begins with" searches

[Avlesh Singh]

>
> It sounds from what you say that I'm going to need to change the field type
> to "edgytext". Which won't achieve the result I want, viz. the current "all"
> plus the edgytext. Any way to achieve this?
>
I guess there is a mismatch of expectations here. A field can be analyzed in
only ONE way. If your field "all" is of type "text", indexing and searching
would go through the analyzers (tokenizers and filters) specified ONLY for
the text field. It does not matter if data from a "edgytext" or any other
field type is being copied into the field.

Having said that converting the "all" field to type "edgytext" should still
work fine. All your regular searches on a text field should also work with
the edgytext field. Ain't it like that?

Cheers
Avlesh

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 2:52 AM, Bernadette Houghton <
bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au> wrote:

> Here's the "all" code snippets -
>
>   
>multiValued="true"/>
> .
> .
> 
>  all
> .
> .
>   
>   
>   
>   
>   
>   
>
> It sounds from what you say that I'm going to need to change the field type
> to "edgytext". Which won't achieve the result I want, viz. the current "all"
> plus the edgytext. Any way to achieve this?
>
> Thanks!
> bern
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Avlesh Singh [mailto:avl...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, 28 October 2009 3:30 PM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Re: "begins with" searches
>
> >
> > My next issue relates to how to get the results of the author field come
> up
> > in a search across all fields. For example, a search on author:"Houghton,
> B"
> > (which uses the edgytext) yields 16 documents, but a search on
> > all:"Houghton, B" (which doesn't) yields only 9. I thought the solution
> > should be  but that doesn't do
> > the trick.
> >
>
> Do you have a field called "all"? How is it set up? Can you post the
> schema.xml snippet relating to this field here?
>  is supported for a dynamic field source.  source="*author_mt" dest="all"/> should work for you as long as you have a
> field called "all" defined in your schema. Moreover, for your specific use
> case, the "all" field needs to be of type "edgytext".
>
> Cheers
> Avlesh
>
> On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Bernadette Houghton <
> bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au> wrote:
>
> > Thanks Avlesh. The issue with not doing a phrase query on my "edgytext"
> > field was that my parent application was adding an escape character to
> the
> > quotation marks, and I was hoping to fix (or rather, work around) at the
> > solr end to save maintenance overhead. But I've done a hack in the parent
> > application to remove those escape chars, and all is working well in that
> > respect.
> >
> > My next issue relates to how to get the results of the author field come
> up
> > in a search across all fields. For example, a search on author:"Houghton,
> B"
> > (which uses the edgytext) yields 16 documents, but a search on
> > all:"Houghton, B" (which doesn't) yields only 9. I thought the solution
> > should be  but that doesn't do
> > the trick.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > bern
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Avlesh Singh [mailto:avl...@gmail.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, 27 October 2009 5:54 PM
> > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> > Subject: Re: "begins with" searches
> >
> > You are right about the parsing of query terms without a double quote
> > (solrQueryParser's defaultOperator has to be "AND" in your case). For the
> > problem at hand, two things -
> >
> >1. Do you have any reason for not doing a PhraseQuery (query terms
> >enclosed in double quotes) on your "edgytext" field? If not then you
> can
> >   always enclose your query in double quotes to get expected "begins
> with"
> >   matches.
> >2. You can always "escape" your query string before passing to Solr;
> and
> >you wouldn't need to pass your query term in double quotes. For
> exapmle,
> >   search for the query string - surname, fre when "escaped" would be
> > converted
> >   into surname,\+fre thereby asking Solr to treat this as a single query
> > term.
> >   For more details -
> >
> >
> http://lucene.apache.org/java/2_3_2/queryparsersyntax.html#Escaping%20Special%20Ch

RE: "begins with" searches

[Bernadette Houghton]

G'day Avlesh, converting the "all" field to type "edgytext" doesn't work as 
expected as the various "text" analysers etc don't get to work on that field, 
so I get less results than expected. And adding the edgy filter into the text 
field also yields less results. I can work around the issue by setting up a new 
"beginswith" edgytext field and using copyfield to copy the relevant fields 
into it. 

But this approach doesn't really suit our parent application's main search 
screen, which is a single box labelled "quick search". Users will be puzzled as 
to why a search for "beginswith:"Houghton, b"" yields 20 results, while a 
search for "Houghton, b" yields 10. And also puzzled as to why "Houghton, b*" 
won't work.as they expect - people are already familiar with using wildcards. A 
way to get around this user perception problem is to get rid of the single 
search box and set up a series of drop down boxes for type of search (begins 
with, etc), along with field names. We might have to go there, but the ideal 
solution from our perspective would be for users to be able to enter terms in 
the "quick search" box without any field prefix, and have solr go off and 
search all field names/types.

By the way, our "text" field type config is currently set as -


  


 





  
  

 






  


Bern


-Original Message-
From: Avlesh Singh [mailto:avl...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, 29 October 2009 12:35 PM
To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
Subject: Re: "begins with" searches

>
> It sounds from what you say that I'm going to need to change the field type
> to "edgytext". Which won't achieve the result I want, viz. the current "all"
> plus the edgytext. Any way to achieve this?
>
I guess there is a mismatch of expectations here. A field can be analyzed in
only ONE way. If your field "all" is of type "text", indexing and searching
would go through the analyzers (tokenizers and filters) specified ONLY for
the text field. It does not matter if data from a "edgytext" or any other
field type is being copied into the field.

Having said that converting the "all" field to type "edgytext" should still
work fine. All your regular searches on a text field should also work with
the edgytext field. Ain't it like that?

Cheers
Avlesh

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 2:52 AM, Bernadette Houghton <
bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au> wrote:

> Here's the "all" code snippets -
>
>   
>multiValued="true"/>
> .
> .
> 
>  all
> .
> .
>   
>   
>   
>   
>   
>   
>
> It sounds from what you say that I'm going to need to change the field type
> to "edgytext". Which won't achieve the result I want, viz. the current "all"
> plus the edgytext. Any way to achieve this?
>
> Thanks!
> bern
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Avlesh Singh [mailto:avl...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, 28 October 2009 3:30 PM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Re: "begins with" searches
>
> >
> > My next issue relates to how to get the results of the author field come
> up
> > in a search across all fields. For example, a search on author:"Houghton,
> B"
> > (which uses the edgytext) yields 16 documents, but a search on
> > all:"Houghton, B" (which doesn't) yields only 9. I thought the solution
> > should be  but that doesn't do
> > the trick.
> >
>
> Do you have a field called "all"? How is it set up? Can you post the
> schema.xml snippet relating to this field here?
>  is supported for a dynamic field source.  source="*author_mt" dest="all"/> should work for you as long as you have a
> field called "all" defined in your schema. Moreover, for your specific use
> case, the "all" field needs to be of type "edgytext".
>
> Cheers
> Avlesh
>
> On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Bernadette Houghton <
> bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au> wrote:
>
> > Thanks Avlesh. The issue with not doing a phrase query on my "edgytext"
> > field was that my parent application was adding an escape character to
> the
> > quotation marks, and I was hoping to fix (or rather, work around) at the
> > solr end to save maintenance overhead. But I've done a hack in the parent
> > application to remove those escape chars, and all is working well in that
>

Re: "begins with" searches

[Avlesh Singh]

>
> G'day Avlesh, converting the "all" field to type "edgytext" doesn't work as
> expected as the various "text" analysers etc don't get to work on that
> field, so I get less results than expected. And adding the edgy filter into
> the text field also yields less results. I can work around the issue by
> setting up a new "beginswith" edgytext field and using copyfield to copy the
> relevant fields into it.
>
You are absolutely right. What you think of being a work-around is actually
a solution!

But this approach doesn't really suit our parent application's main search
> screen, which is a single box labelled "quick search". Users will be puzzled
> as to why a search for "beginswith:"Houghton, b"" yields 20 results, while a
> search for "Houghton, b" yields 10. And also puzzled as to why "Houghton,
> b*" won't work. as they expect - people are already familiar with using
> wildcards. A way to get around this user perception problem is to get rid of
> the single search box and set up a series of drop down boxes for type of
> search (begins with, etc), along with field names. We might have to go
> there, but the ideal solution from our perspective would be for users to be
> able to enter terms in the "quick search" box without any field prefix, and
> have solr go off and search all field names/types.
>
As I said earlier, a field can be analyzed in only ONE way. In your kind of
requirements, multiple searching capabilities are needed for a single query.
Unfortunately, not all of these can be addressed by a single field. The
solution is to create multiple fields set up with different analyzers
(tokenizers and filters) while indexing and searching. At query time an OR
query can be done for all such fields (with a corresponding boost for a
particular field, if desired). Lucene would automatically rank the results
in correct order based on hits across multiple fields.

Hope this helps. And sorry for the delayed response.

Cheers
Avlesh

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 3:22 AM, Bernadette Houghton <
bernadette.hough...@deakin.edu.au> wrote:

> G'day Avlesh, converting the "all" field to type "edgytext" doesn't work as
> expected as the various "text" analysers etc don't get to work on that
> field, so I get less results than expected. And adding the edgy filter into
> the text field also yields less results. I can work around the issue by
> setting up a new "beginswith" edgytext field and using copyfield to copy the
> relevant fields into it.
>
> But this approach doesn't really suit our parent application's main search
> screen, which is a single box labelled "quick search". Users will be puzzled
> as to why a search for "beginswith:"Houghton, b"" yields 20 results, while a
> search for "Houghton, b" yields 10. And also puzzled as to why "Houghton,
> b*" won't work.as they expect - people are already familiar with using
> wildcards. A way to get around this user perception problem is to get rid of
> the single search box and set up a series of drop down boxes for type of
> search (begins with, etc), along with field names. We might have to go
> there, but the ideal solution from our perspective would be for users to be
> able to enter terms in the "quick search" box without any field prefix, and
> have solr go off and search all field names/types.
>
> By the way, our "text" field type config is currently set as -
>
> positionIncrementGap="100">
>  
>
>
>
> words="stopwords.txt"/>
> generateWordParts="1" generateNumberParts="1" catenateWords="1"
> catenateNumbers="1" catenateAll="0"/>
>
> protected="protwords.txt"/>
>
>  
>  
>
>
> ignoreCase="true" expand="true"/>
> words="stopwords.txt"/>
> generateWordParts="1" generateNumberParts="1" catenateWords="0"
> catenateNumbers="0" catenateAll="0"/>
>
> protected="protwords.txt"/>
>
>  
>
>
> Bern
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Avlesh Singh [mailto:avl...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Thursday, 29 October 2009 12:35 PM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Re: "begins with" searches
>
> >
> > It sounds from what you say that I'm going to need to change the field
> type
> > to "edgyt