The Query Elevation Component lets you configure the top results for a given query regardless of the normal Lucene scoring.
This is sometimes called "sponsored search", "editorial boosting", or "best bets." This component matches the user query text to a configured map of top results. The text can be any string or non-string IDs, as long as it’s indexed. Although this component will work with any QueryParser, it makes the most sense to use with DisMax or eDisMax.
The Query Elevation Component also supports distributed searching.
All of the sample configuration and queries used in this section assume you are running Solr’s “techproducts” example:
bin/solr -e techproductsConfiguring the Query Elevation Component
You can configure the Query Elevation Component in the solrconfig.xml file. Search components like QueryElevationComponent may be added to any request handler; a dedicated request handler is used here for brevity.
<searchComponent name="elevator" class="solr.QueryElevationComponent" >
<!-- pick a fieldType to analyze queries -->
<str name="queryFieldType">string</str>
<str name="config-file">elevate.xml</str>
</searchComponent>
<requestHandler name="/elevate" class="solr.SearchHandler" startup="lazy">
<lst name="defaults">
<str name="echoParams">explicit</str>
</lst>
<arr name="last-components">
<str>elevator</str>
</arr>
</requestHandler>Optionally, in the Query Elevation Component configuration you can also specify the following to distinguish editorial results from "normal" results:
<str name="editorialMarkerFieldName">foo</str>The Query Elevation Search Component takes the following parameters:
queryFieldType-
Specifies which fieldType should be used to analyze the incoming text. For example, it may be appropriate to use a fieldType with a LowerCaseFilter.
config-file-
Path to the file that defines query elevation. This file must exist in
<instanceDir>/conf/<config-file>or<dataDir>/<config-file>. If the file exists in theconf/directory it will be loaded once at startup. If it exists in thedata/directory, it will be reloaded for each IndexReader. forceElevation-
By default, this component respects the requested
sortparameter: if the request asks to sort by date, it will order the results by date. IfforceElevation=true(the default), results will first return the boosted docs, then order by date. This is also a request parameter, which will override the config. useConfiguredElevatedOrder-
When multiple docs are elevated, should their relative order be the order in the configuration file or should they be subject to whatever the sort criteria is? True by default. This is also a request parameter, which will override the config. The effect is most apparent when forceElevation is true and there is sorting on fields.
The elevate.xml File
Elevated query results can be configured in an external XML file specified in the config-file argument. An elevate.xml file might look like this:
<elevate>
<query text="foo bar">
<doc id="1" />
<doc id="2" />
<doc id="3" />
</query>
<query text="ipod">
<doc id="MA147LL/A" /> <!-- put the actual ipod at the top -->
<doc id="IW-02" exclude="true" /> <!-- exclude this cable -->
</query>
</elevate>In this example, the query "foo bar" would first return documents 1, 2 and 3, then whatever normally appears for the same query. For the query "ipod", it would first return "MA147LL/A", and would make sure that "IW-02" is not in the result set.
If documents to be elevated are not defined in the elevate.xml file, they should be passed in at query time with the elevateIds parameter.
Using the Query Elevation Component
The enableElevation Parameter
For debugging it may be useful to see results with and without the elevated docs. To hide results, use enableElevation=false:
http://localhost:8983/solr/techproducts/elevate?q=ipod&df=text&debugQuery=true&enableElevation=truehttp://localhost:8983/solr/techproducts/elevate?q=ipod&df=text&debugQuery=true&enableElevation=falseThe forceElevation Parameter
You can force elevation during runtime by adding forceElevation=true to the query URL:
http://localhost:8983/solr/techproducts/elevate?q=ipod&df=text&debugQuery=true&enableElevation=true&forceElevation=trueThe exclusive Parameter
You can force Solr to return only the results specified in the elevation file by adding exclusive=true to the URL:
http://localhost:8983/solr/techproducts/elevate?q=ipod&df=text&debugQuery=true&exclusive=trueThe useConfiguredElevatedOrder Parameter
You can force set useConfiguredElevatedOrder during runtime by supplying it as a request parameter.
Document Transformers and the markExcludes Parameter
The [elevated] Document Transformer can be used to annotate each document with information about whether or not it was elevated:
http://localhost:8983/solr/techproducts/elevate?q=ipod&df=text&fl=id,[elevated]Likewise, it can be helpful when troubleshooting to see all matching documents – including documents that the elevation configuration would normally exclude. This is possible by using the markExcludes=true parameter, and then using the [excluded] transformer:
http://localhost:8983/solr/techproducts/elevate?q=ipod&df=text&markExcludes=true&fl=id,[elevated],[excluded]The elevateIds and excludeIds Parameters
When the elevation component is in use, the pre-configured list of elevations for a query can be overridden at request time to use the unique keys specified in these request parameters.
For example, in the request below documents 3007WFP and 9885A004 will be elevated, and document IW-02 will be excluded — regardless of what elevations or exclusions are configured for the query "cable" in elevate.xml:
http://localhost:8983/solr/techproducts/elevate?q=cable&df=text&excludeIds=IW-02&elevateIds=3007WFP,9885A004If either one of these parameters is specified at request time, the the entire elevation configuration for the query is ignored.
For example, in the request below documents IW-02 and F8V7067-APL-KIT will be elevated, and no documents will be excluded – regardless of what elevations or exclusions are configured for the query "ipod" in elevate.xml:
http://localhost:8983/solr/techproducts/elevate?q=ipod&df=text&elevateIds=IW-02,F8V7067-APL-KITThe fq Parameter with Elevation
Query elevation respects the standard filter query (fq) parameter. That is, if the query contains the fq parameter, all results will be within that filter even if elevate.xml adds other documents to the result set.