What is Apache Solr?

Solr is an Open Source enterprise search server based on the Lucene library. Functions of Solr include XML / HTTP and JSON APIs, hit highlighting, faceted search, caching, replication, a web administration interface, and much more.


What is EXT:solr?

EXT:solr is an extension for TYPO3, which provides an interface to search with Solr. Integrating Solr with TYPO3 allows visitors of sites to do advanced searches with fast and improved results.


Objectives of EXT:solr

EXT:sor in general pursues the integrating of Solr with TYPO3.

Through the integration, it will be possible to quickly search even large sites with thousands of pages. First, an equivalent replacement for the Indexed Search shall be offered. To achieve this, the Solr integration supports indexing of the TYPO3 frontend, a page browser for search results, search word highlighting in search results, recognition of frontend user group permissions, start/stop times, languages and an advanced search form.

Furthermore, the integration provides the advanced search functions provided by Solr. These include 

  • faceted search
  • "Did you mean ..." error
  • Ranking of search results
  • Placement of editorial content in search results (Paid Content)
  • Synonym Search
  • Stop words

 

It's also planned to provide results for pages from outside the TYPO3 CMS. That allows to present content from external applications (blog, , media-neutral database, external websites and the like) together with the results coming from TYPO3 pages.

The TYPO3 backend offers a dedicated administration module to manage the Solr server, check statistics and displaying the Solr server status.

For further development stages we also plan to offer alternative indexing methods - like imidiate update of the search index as soon as content is changed or published in the TYPO3 backend.


Interested?

Solr for TYPO3 is still in development. For the beginning development is driven by private financing. Please contact Olivier Dobberkau if you're in the need for an advanced search solution for your TYPO3 project.

Olivier Dobberkau