Drupal has long provided a built-in search mechanism, so why do we need anything more? In this tutorial, we introduce Apache Solr, a free and open source search service that has several advantages and features beyond Drupal's built-in search.

In this tutorial, we'll:

Just as you would for Drupal, you should always test your search configuration prior to deploying it to production. In this tutorial, we examine the various ways to set up Apache Solr locally on your system.

In this tutorial, we'll:

• List which popular local development environments provide Solr
• Describe how to find a Solr Docker container
• How to set up a local, Docker-based local dev environment with Solr

Goal

Set up a local web development environment with Solr using Docker.

In order for Drupal to work with Apache Solr, we need to add the Search API module. This module provides a generic interface for search backends, including Solr. Furthermore, it adds several features to search without the need for custom code.

In this tutorial, we'll:

• Describe why Search API is necessary to use Solr with Drupal
• Identify a Search API server

Goal

Install the required modules to use Apache Solr with Drupal.

While Solr compartmentalizes settings into cores, Search API organizes things into indexes. Each Search API index can have a unique set of settings and crawl a specified list of content types. Search API indexes can be created in the Search API admin interface.

In this tutorial, we'll:

• Identify a Search API index
• Describe how an index is related to a Solr core

Goal

Create a Search API index for Solr, and perform initial configuration of the index.

Reference field types, such as taxonomy term fields, paragraph fields, or plain entity reference fields, refer to a completely separate entity within the site. This makes search configuration complicated as the typical scope of a search crawl is on a per-node (really a per-entity) basis. Fortunately there are known strategies to index these fields with ease.

In this tutorial, we'll:

Drupal has the ability to support multiple Search API indexes within a single installation. While adding a new index is easy, we must understand the implications of creating and using multiple Search API indexes.

In this tutorial, we'll:

• Identify when to create multiple indexes in Search API
• Define virtual indexes, and their performance implications

Goal

To understand the various circumstances in which you would want to create multiple indexes in a Search API Solr setup.

Excerpts are brief snippets of text displayed in search results. They give context to how the search terms relate to the result. Search API provides support for excerpts out of the box.

In this tutorial, we'll:

• Identify how to apply excerpts to a search index
• Describe how to add excerpt display to the search view

Goal

Add excerpting, or "snippets", to search results without the need for custom code.

One of the key advantages of custom search is to do more than provide a single, global search box. Filtering allows you to divide results to a subset.

In this tutorial, we'll:

• Describe how to configure filtering through use of a taxonomy field
• Explain the disadvantages of this approach, including how it relies on Views to reduce results rather than Solr

Goal

Learn to use Views exposed filters in a Search API view.

Creating a facet in Drupal is rather different from using Facets API in Drupal 7. In the new module, we first create a search view, and then configure facets against target fields in the index. Once created, we must configure the facet UI to appear on target pages using the Blocks UI.

In this tutorial, we'll: