Sunspot

Step 1: Set up a Websolr Index

• If you’ve signed up with us at https://websolr.com, you will want to follow the directions here. When it comes to choosing a Solr configuration, make sure to pick the Sunspot option.

• Heroku users should follow these directions. Websolr will default to creating the new index using Sunspot’s configuration. You can also specify it via the command line, like so: heroku addons:create websolr[:PLAN] [-a APP_NAME] --config=sunspot

Step 2: The Solr Index URL

When you have successfully created your index, it will be given a semi-random URL. You can find this in the Websolr.com Dashboard, in the Overview tab. From this view, you can also verify that the Configuration in use is Sunspot’s:

Using curl:

curl https://us-east-1.websolr.com/solr/a1b2c3d4e5/select
{"responseHeader":{"status":0,"QTime":59},"response":{"numFound":0,"start":0,"docs":[]}}

Using a browser:

Step 3: Install the Gem

To install Sunspot, you will need the sunspot_rails gem. Add the following to your Gemfile outside of any blocks:

gem 'sunspot_rails'

Make sure to bundle install. This will install the libraries necessary to use Sunspot.

Step 4: Tell Sunspot where your Solr Index is located

You can optionally also create a sunspot.yml file with this Rake task:

rails generate sunspot_rails:install

The sunspot.yml file looks something like this:

production:
  solr:
    hostname: localhost
    port: 8983
    log_level: WARNING
    path: /solr/production


development:
  solr:
    hostname: localhost
    port: 8982
    log_level: INFO
    path: /solr/development


test:
  solr:
    hostname: localhost
    port: 8981
    log_level: WARNING
    path: /solr/test

production:
  solr:
    hostname: us-east-1.websolr.com
    port: 443
    scheme: https
    path: /solr/0a1b2c3d4e5f


development:
  solr:
    hostname: us-east-1.websolr.com
    port: 443
    scheme: https
    path: /solr/blahblahblah


test:
  solr:
    hostname: us-east-1.websolr.com
    port: 443
    scheme: https
    path: /solr/s0m3t35tth1ng

It is also possible to add some additional parameters to the sunspot.yml file, which override the default behaviors. You can find documentation on these different parameters here.

Step 5: Add Sunspot to your Models

Any model that you will want to be searchable with Sunspot will need to be configured to do so by adding the searchable block with its attributes. Our demo app has a User model that looks something like this:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  searchable do
    text :first_name
    text :last_name
    text :email
    text :address
    text :city
    integer :zip_code
    text :company
    text :company_description
  end
end

This makes the model searchable with Sunspot. 

Step 6: Create a Search Route

You will need to set up a route to handle searching. The easiest way to do this is to have a search route per model. This involves updating your models’ corresponding controller, and defining a route in config/routes.rb. You’ll also need to have some views that handle rendering the results, and a form that posts data to the controller(s). Take a look at how we implemented this in our demo app for some examples of how this is done.

Our Example

In our example Rails app, we have one model, User, with a handful of attributes. It looks something like this:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  searchable do
    text :first_name
    text :last_name
    text :email
    text :address
    text :city
    integer :zip_code
    text :company
    text :company_description
  end
end

To implement search, we used the file called app/controllers/users_controller.rb and added this code:

def search
   @results = User.search { fulltext "#{params[:q]}"}.results 
end

We then created a route in the config/routes.rb file:

resources :users do
    collection do
      post :search  # creates a route called users_search
    end
  end

Next, we need to have some views to render the data we get back from Solr. The search controller action will be rendered by creating a file called app/views/users/search.html.erb and adding:

<div class="container">
  <h3>Search Results</h3>
  <% if @results.present? %>
    <%= render partial: 'search_result' %>
  <% else %>
    <h4>Nothing here, chief!</h4>
  <% end %>
</div>

This way if there are no results to show, we simply put a banner indicating as such. If there are results to display, we will iterate over the collection(assigning each one to a local variable called result), and passing it off to a partial. Create a file for a partial called app/views/users/_search_result.html.erb and add:

<div class="row">
  <div class="col">
    <%= link_to "#{result.first_name} #{result.last_name} <#{result.email}>", user_path(result) %><br />
    <strong><%= result.company %></strong><br />
    <em><%= result.company_description %></em><br />
    <br />
  </div>
</div>

<%= form_with(url: search_users_path, method: "post", class: 'form-inline my-2 my-lg-0', local: true) do %>
     <%= text_field_tag(:q, nil, class: "form-control mr-sm-2", placeholder: "Search") %>
     <%= button_tag("Search", class: "btn btn-outline-info my-2 my-sm-0", name: nil) %>
  <% end %>