INSTALLATION - pantheon-systems/search_api_pantheon GitHub Wiki

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Composer

Composer is the way you should be managing your drupal module requirements. This module will install its dependencies when you use composer to install.

Dependencies (installed by composer):

  • Solarium. Solarium is a Solr client library for PHP and is not Drupal-specific. First, register Drupal.org as a provider of Composer packages. This command should be run locally from the root directory of your Drupal 8 git repository.

  • Search API. Search API is Drupal's module for indexing content entities.

  • Search API Solr. Search API Solr makes search API work with Apache Solr. Composer will manaage which version

  • Guzzle. Guzzle version 6 is standard with Drupal Core 8.x | 9.x (read 8.x OR 9.x).

Install

To require this module in your composer file:

composer require pantheon-systems/search_api_pantheon ^8 --prefer-dist

Install the module and push an updated composer.lock file to your pantheon environment.

Setup

PLATFORM SUPPORT

See the Drupal.org for complete documentation on Search API. To configure the connection with Pantheon, do the following steps on your Dev environment (or a Multidev):

  • Enable Solr on your Pantheon site

    • Under "Settings" in your Pantheon site dashboard, enable Solr as an add on. This feature is available for sandbox sites as well as paid plans at the Professional level and above.

  • Enable Solr 8 in your pantheon.yml file

    • Add the bolded portion to your pantheon.yml file (** SYNTAX NOT FINAL; Use pantheon internal YGG instructions until yml support is final and available in prod **):

      php_version: 7.4
database:
  version: 10.4
drush_version: 10
search:
  version: 8

      As you promote the code, the Pantheon.yml file will follow the code through environments enabling the solr server, However you will need to create an index for each environment and ensure the content is indexed after creation. Indices are specific to the Solr core with/for which they were created. Indices cannot be exported or moved once created.

USAGE

  • Enable the modules

    • Go to admin/modules and enable "Search API Pantheon."

    • Doing so will also enable Search API and Search API Solr if they are not already enabled.

  • OPTIONAL: Disable Drupal Core's search module

    • If you are using Search API, then you probably will not be using Drupal Core's Search module.

    • Uninstall it to save some confusion in the further configuration steps: admin/modules/uninstall.

  • The module should install a SEARCH API server for you

    • Navigate in the drupal interface to CONFIG => SEARCH & METADATA => SEARCH API

    • Validate that the PANTHEON SEARCH server exists and is "enabled".

  • Solr versions and schemas

    • The version of Solr on Pantheon is Apache Solr 8.8. When you first create your index or alter it significantly, you will need to update the SCHEMA on the server. Do that either with a drush command or in the administration for the Solr Server.

    • Navigate to CONFIGURATION => SEARCH AND METADATA => SEARCH API => PANTHEON SEARCH => PANTHEON SEARCH ADMIN

    • Choose the button labeled "POST SOLR SCHEMA".

    • The module will post a schema specific to your site.

  • Use the server with an index

    The following steps are not Pantheon-specific. This module only alters the the configuration of Search API servers. To use a server, you next need to create an index.

    • Go to admin/config/search/search-api/add-index.

    • Name your index and choose a data source. If this is your first time using Search API, start by selecting "Content" as a data source. That option will index the articles, basic pages, and other node types you have configured.

    • Select "Pantheon" as the server.

    • Save the index.

    • For this index to be useable, you will also need to configure fields to be searched. Select the "fields" tab and CHOOSE FIELDS TO BE INCLUDED IN THE INDEX. You may want to index many fields. "Title" is a good field to start with.

    • After adding fields the configuration, make sure the index is full by clicking "Index now" or by running cron.

  • Search the Index

    • Create a new view returning INDEX PANTHEON SOLR8 of type 'ALL'. Don't worry right now how it's sorted, we're going to change that to 'relevance' once we have some data being returned during the search.

    • In the view, CHOOSE FIELDS TO BE INCLUDED IN THE RESULTS from the fields you added to your index when you created it. In addition to the fields you added to the index, choose 'relevance' to added to the results.

    • Expose any keywords to the user to change and the view will put a KEYWORDS

    • Once your search is returning results, you can now sort by the "relevance" field and solr will give the documents a relevance rating. Higher rating means Solr thinks the item is "more relevant" to your search term.

  • Export your changes

    • It is a best practice in Drupal 8 to export your changes to yml files. Using Terminus while in SFTP mode, you can run terminus --env=dev drush "config-export -y" to export the configuration changes you have made. Once committed, these changes can be deployed out to Test and Live environments.

  • OPTIONAL INSTALLS

    Any of the optional search_api modules should work without issue with Pantheon Solr, including but not limited to:

    • Search API Attachments

    • Search API Facets

    • Search API Autocomplete

    • Search API Spellcheck

    • Search API Ajax

Pantheon environments

Each Pantheon environment (Dev, Test, Live, and Multidevs) has its own Solr server. Indexing and searching in one environment does not impact any other environment.

Feedback and collaboration

Bug reports, feature requests, and feedback should be posted in the drupal.org issue queue. For code changes, please submit pull requests against the GitHub repository rather than posting patches to drupal.org.

TROUBLESHOOTING

  • drush search_api_pantheon:diagnose (sapd) The DIAGNOSE command will check the various pieces of the Search API install and throw errors on the pieces that are not working. This command will develop further as the module nears general availability.

  • drush search_api_pantheon:select (saps) This command will run the given query against Solr server. It's recommended to use ?debug=true in any Solr page to get a good query to pass to this command to debug results.