[SOLR-1163] Solr Explorer - A generic GWT client for Solr

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Won't Fix
• Affects Version/s: 1.3
• Component/s: Admin UI
• Assignee: Alexandre Rafalovitch
• Reporter: Uri Boness
• Created: 13/May/09 15:42
• Updated: 16/Feb/17 15:55
• Resolved: 03/Aug/16 15:02

Description

The attached patch is a GWT generic client for solr. It is currently standalone, meaning that once built, one can open the generated HTML file in a browser and communicate with any deployed solr. It is configured with it's own configuration file, where one can configure the solr instance/core to connect to. Since it's currently standalone and completely client side based, it uses JSON with padding (cross-side scripting) to connect to remote solr servers. Some of the supported features:

• Simple query search
• Sorting - one can dynamically define new sort criterias
• Search results are rendered very much like Google search results are rendered. It is also possible to view all stored field values for every hit.
• Custom hit rendering - It is possible to show thumbnails (images) per hit and also customize a view for a hit based on html templates
• Faceting - one can dynamically define field and query facets via the UI. it is also possible to pre-configure these facets in the configuration file.
• Highlighting - you can dynamically configure highlighting. it can also be pre-configured in the configuration file
• Spellchecking - you can dynamically configure spell checking. Can also be done in the configuration file. Supports collation. It is also possible to send "build" and "reload" commands.
• Data import handler - if used, it is possible to send a "full-import" and "status" command ("delta-import" is not implemented yet, but it's easy to add)
• Console - For development time, there's a small console which can help to better understand what's going on behind the scenes. One can use it to:
  • view the client logs
  • browse the solr scheme
  • View a break down of the current search context
  • View a break down of the query URL that is sent to solr
  • View the raw JSON response returning from Solr

This client is actually a platform that can be greatly extended for more things. The goal is to have a client where the explorer part is just one view of it. Other future views include: Monitoring, Administration, Query Builder, DataImportHandler configuration, and more...

To get a better view of what's currently possible. We've set up a public version of this client at: http://search.jteam.nl/explorer. This client is configured with one solr instance where crawled YouTube movies where indexed. You can also check out a screencast for this deployed client: http://search.jteam.nl/help

The patch created a new folder in the contrib. directory. Since the patch doesn't contain binaries, an additional zip file is provides that needs to be extract to add all the required graphics. This module is maven2 based and is configured in such a way that all GWT related tools/libraries are automatically downloaded when the modules is compiled. One of the artifacts of the build is a war file which can be deployed in any servlet container.

NOTE: this client works best on WebKit based browsers (for performance reason) but also works on firefox and ie 7+. That said, it should be taken into account that it is still under development.