I'm using Sorl to create an image search functionality that allows users to search for an existing image in the site to add to new content. A given piece of content has a field that can store multiple images, so I will need to use a multi-value Solr field to store image data. Currently, I'm storing the path and file name in a tom_* field, since I want to be able to search on file name. However, another piece of data that I need to store and retrieve is the file id used to identify the file in the database (in the same table as the image path). What is the best way to store this data so that the file id and path values are properly synced, since there can be multiple images for each piece of content? I could just store the file path/name (I need that data to be searchable, so it has to be stored in Solr), and then query the db for the fid once I get the results back, but I'd rather not do that if I don't have to.
Searching around, it doesn't appear that I can store multiple pieces of data in one field without doing some sort of concatenation and then splitting at query time. If I just use two separate fields in each document, is it safe to assume that the values will be synchronized in the search results? In other words, if I put two values each into tom_image_path and im_image_file_id, when I query and the document is returned, can I assume the values in the two fields are synchronized? Or, is there a way to store multiple pieces of data in one field so that they can be indexed together and then retrived together? Thanks. Steve
