Interesting. You guessed right. I changed "multivalued" to "multiValued" and all of a sudden I get Strings. But, doesn't multivalued default to false? In my schema, I originally did not set multivalued. I only put in multivalued="false" after I experienced this issue.
-Rich For the record, I had a number of fields which had never settings for multivalued because none of them were multivalued and I expected the default to be false. When I experienced this problem, I added multivalued="false" to all of them. I still had the problem. So, I added a method to deal with the returned ArrayLists: private Object getFieldValue(String field, SolrDocument document) { ArrayList list = (ArrayList)document.getFieldValue(field); return list.get(0); } I deliberately did not test if the return Object was an ArrayList because I wanted to get an exception if any of them were Strings; I got no exceptions, so they were all returned as ArrayLists. I then changed one of the fields to use multiValued="false", and I got an exception, trying to cast String to ArrayList! So, I changed all the troublesome fields to use multiValued, and changed my helper method to look like this: private Object getFieldValue(String field, SolrDocument document) { Object o = document.getFieldValue(field); if (o instanceof ArrayList) { System.out.println("####### Field " + field + " is an instance of ArrayList."); ArrayList list = (ArrayList)document.getFieldValue(field); return list.get(0); } else { if (!(o instanceof String)) { System.out.println("###### ERROR"); } else { System.out.println("####### Field " + field + " is an instance of String."); } return o; } } Here's the output, interspersed with the schema definitions of the fields: <field name="uri" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" multiValued="false" required="true" /> ####### Field uri is an instance of String. <field name="entity_label" type="string" indexed="false" stored="true" required="false" /> ####### Field entity_label is an instance of ArrayList. <field name="institution_uri" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false" /> ####### Field institution_uri is an instance of ArrayList. <field name="asserted_type_uri" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false" /> ####### Field asserted_type_uri is an instance of ArrayList. <field name="asserted_type_label" type="text_eaglei" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false" /> ####### Field asserted_type_label is an instance of ArrayList. <field name="provider_uri" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" multiValued="false" required="false" /> ####### Field provider_uri is an instance of String. <field name="provider_label" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" multiValued="false" required="false" /> ####### Field provider_label is an instance of String. As you can see, the ones with no declaration for multivalued are returned as ArrayLists, while the ones with multiValued="false" are returned as Strings. So, it looks like there are two problems here: multivalued (small v) is not recognized, since using that in the schema still causes all fields to be returned as ArrayLists; and, multivalued does not default to false (or, at least, not setting it causes a field to be returned as an ArrayList, as though it were set to true). -Rich -----Original Message----- From: Erick Erickson [mailto:erickerick...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 4:25 PM To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org Subject: Re: getFieldValue always returns an ArrayList? Hmmm, I admit I'm not using embedded, and I'm using 3.2, but I'm not seeing the behavior you are. My question about reindexing could have been better stated, I was just making sure you didn't have some leftover cruft where your field was multi-valued from previous experiments, but if you're reindexing each time that's not the problem. Arrrggggh, camel case may be striking again. Try multiValued, not multivalued.... If that's still not it, can we see the code? Best Erick On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 3:47 PM, Simon, Richard T <richard_si...@hms.harvard.edu> wrote: > We rebuild the index from scratch each time we start (for now). The fields in > question are not multi-valued; in fact, I explicitly set multi-valued to > false, just to be sure. > > Yes, this is SolrJ, using the embedded server, if that matters. > > Using Solr/Lucene 3.1.0. > > -Rich > > -----Original Message----- > From: Erick Erickson [mailto:erickerick...@gmail.com] > Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 3:44 PM > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org > Subject: Re: getFieldValue always returns an ArrayList? > > Did you perhaps change the schema but not re-index? I'm grasping > at straws here, but something like this might happen if part of > your index has that field as a multi-valued field.... > > If that't not the problem, what version of solr are you using? I > presume this is SolrJ? > > Best > Erick > > On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 2:21 PM, Simon, Richard T > <richard_si...@hms.harvard.edu> wrote: >> Hi - I am examining a SolrDocument I retrieved through a query. The field I >> am looking at is declared this way in my schema: >> >> <field name="uri" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" >> multivalued="false" required="true" /> >> >> I know multivalued defaults to false, but I set it explicitly because I'm >> seeing some unexpected behavior. I retrieve the value of the field like so: >> >> final String resource = (String)document.getFieldValue("uri"); >> >> >> However, I get an exception because an ArrayList is returned. I confirmed >> that the returned ArrayList has one element with the correct value, but I >> thought getFieldValue would return a String if the field is single valued. >> When I index the document, I have some code that retrieves the same field in >> the same way from the SolrInputDocument, and that code works. >> >> I looked at the code for SolrDocument.setField and it looks like the only >> way a field should be set to an ArrayList is if one is passed in by the code >> creating the SolrDocument. Why would it do that if the field is not >> multivalued? >> >> Is this behavior expected? >> >> -Rich >> >