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

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