HTTP 413: Request Too Large

This error indicates that the request body to Solr exceeded the limits of the Websolr proxy layer. This can be caused by a few things:

1. A request larger than 40MB. This cap is meant to be a safety mechanism to prevent runaway queries from overwhelming the routing layer, while still being an order of magnitude higher than 99.9% of request bodies.
2. Indexing too many documents at once. Solr allows applications to index groups of documents in a single request. Sending a single batch of millions of documents could easily trigger the HTTP 413 message.
3. Lots of request headers. Metadata about a request can be passed to Solr in the form of request headers. Websolr allows up to 16KB for request headers; this should be enough for whatever CORS and content-type specification needs to occur. Note that the TLS and authentication headers in the request are not counted towards this limit.
4. Indexing large files. When Solr indexes a rich text file like a PDF or Word document, it converts the file into a Base64 string to compress it for transit. Still, it’s possible that this string is longer than 40MB, which could trigger the HTTP 413 error.

If you’re seeing this error frequently, check that you’re not explicitly sending lots of headers to your cluster.

If you’re seeing this message during bulk indexing, then decrease your batch sizes by half and try again. Repeat until you can reindex without receiving an HTTP 413.

Finally, if it is indeed a large file causing the problem, then the odds are good that metadata and media in the file are resulting in its huge size. You may need to use a some file editing tool to remove the media (images, movies, sounds) and possibly the metadata from the file and then try again. If the files are user-submitted, consider capping the file size your users are able to upload.