Advanced Search in Sitecore using Solr

Presented at the Danish Sitecore User Group Meetup, November 2016: The story about how you can leverage the ContentSearch API to create a more generic, configurable way, of working with search queries in Sitecore

Transcript

1. Advanced Search in Sitecore using Solr Sitecore User Group Meetup November 2016, Copenhagen
2. Or the story about … … how you can leverage the ContentSearch API to create a more generic, configurable way, of working with search queries in Sitecore
3. I’m working as a System Consultant at Pentia A/S in Copenhagen. Currently I'm developing a lot of different solutions using .NET, ASP.NET and Sitecore. Twitter: @soren_engel Blog: soen.ghost.io
4. The journey | How we normally use the ContentSearch API | The (hidden) problems that comes along | Towards a solution | Next steps | I’ll do my best to answer your questions!
5. How we normally use the ContentSearch API
6. Let’s look at an example Step 1 Figure out what you should query Step 2 Create your custom search query logic Step 3 Present search results to the user
7. The (hidden) problems that comes along…
8. | The query only exists in code | Changes to the search query requires two things A developer A deploy | Time to market is slowed down | Cost (even small changes can be expensive) | Difficult to personalize search queries Yes, there are some issues…
9. Towards a solution
10. | Goals | Rethinking the concept | Making an architecture that supports the goals | Looking at the solution (code) so far (includes a demo) The steps towards a solution…
11. Goals
12. | Enable search query configuration without code changes | Allow specifying nested search query structures for complex queries | Allow a search query to either react to values provided dynamically, or by using preset default values | Use the ContentSearch API as the underlying interface for querying search results | Make it possible to vary search queries based on personalization | Enable extensibility What should the goals be?
13. Thinking about the concept … “Configurable Search”
15. Making an architecture that supports the goals
17. Looking at the solution, the code, and a demo
18. Next steps
19. | Finalizing the configuration from within Sitecore | Add unit tests | Write documentation | Add new features: Paging, Sorting, Facets, and so on | Conjunction will be open sourced on GitHub! | Follow along my blog for more details on the API, and be sure to give me feedback So, what’s coming up?
22. Pentia A/S Zeppelinerhallen Islands Brygge 55 2300 København S CVR 20 86 88 72 T +45 33 74 33 94 E sen@pentia.dk