: > Previously we were using lucene to do this. by using the : > SortComparatorSource we could sort the documents returned by distance : > nicely. we are now switching over to lucene because of the features it : > provides, however i am not able to see a way to do this in Solr.
Someone started another thread where they specificly discuss the "Geographical distance searching" aspect of your question. to answer the broader question of using customized LUcene SortComparatorSource objects in solr -- it is in fact possible. In Solr, all decisisons about how to sort are driven by FieldTypes. You can subclass any of the FieldTypes that come with Solr and override just the getSortField method to use whatever sort logic you want and then use your new FieldType as you would any other plugin... http://wiki.apache.org/solr/SolrPlugins In the case where you have a custom SortComparatorSource that is not "field" specific (or uses data from morethen one field) you would need to make your field type smart enough to let you cofigure (via the <fieldType> declaration in the schema) which fields (if any) to get it's data from, and then create a marker field of that type, which you don't use to index or store any data, but you use to indicate when to trigger your custom sort logic, ie... <fieldType name="distance" class="solr.YourField" latFieldName="latitude" lonFieldName="longitute" stored="false" indexed="false /> ... <field name="latitude" type="sint" indexed="true" stored="true" /> <field name="latitude" type="sint" indexed="true" stored="true" /> <field name="distance" type="distance" /> ...and then use "sort=distance+asc" in your query -Hoss
