Other Parsers

In addition to the main query parsers discussed earlier, there are several other query parsers that can be used instead of or in conjunction with the main parsers for specific purposes.

This section details the other parsers, and gives examples for how they might be used.

Many of these parsers are expressed the same way as Local Parameters in Queries.

Block Join Query Parsers

There are two query parsers that support block joins. These parsers allow indexing and searching for relational content that has been indexed as Nested Documents.

The example usage of the query parsers below assumes the following documents have been indexed:

<add>
  <doc>
    <field name="id">1</field>
    <field name="content_type">parent</field>
    <field name="title">Solr has block join support</field>
    <doc>
      <field name="id">2</field>
      <field name="content_type">child</field>
      <field name="comments">SolrCloud supports it too!</field>
    </doc>
  </doc>
  <doc>
    <field name="id">3</field>
    <field name="content_type">parent</field>
    <field name="title">New Lucene and Solr release</field>
    <doc>
      <field name="id">4</field>
      <field name="content_type">child</field>
      <field name="comments">Lots of new features</field>
    </doc>
  </doc>
</add>

Block Join Children Query Parser

This parser wraps a query that matches some parent documents and returns the children of those documents.

The syntax for this parser is: q={!child of=<blockMask>}<someParents>.

  • The inner subordinate query string (someParents) must be a query that will match some parent documents

  • The of parameter must be a query string to use as a Block Mask — typically a query that matches the set of all possible parent documents

The resulting query will match all documents which do not match the <blockMask> query and are children (or descendents) of the documents matched by <someParents>.

Using the example documents above, we can construct a query such as q={!child of="content_type:parent"}title:lucene. We only get one document in response:

<result name="response" numFound="1" start="0">
  <doc>
    <str name="id">4</str>
    <arr name="content_type"><str>child</str></arr>
    <str name="comments">Lots of new features</str>
  </doc>
</result>

The query for someParents MUST match a strict subset of the documents matched by the Block Mask or your query may result in an Error:

Parent query must not match any docs besides parent filter. Combine them as must (+) and must-not (-) clauses to find a problem doc.

You can search for q=+(someParents) -(blockMask) to find a cause if you encounter this type of error.

Filtering and Tagging

{!child} also supports filters and excludeTags local parameters like the following:

?q={!child of=<blockMask> filters=$parentfq excludeTags=certain}<someParents>
&parentfq=BRAND:Foo
&parentfq=NAME:Bar
&parentfq={!tag=certain}CATEGORY:Baz

This is equivalent to:

q={!child of=<blockMask>}+<someParents> +BRAND:Foo +NAME:Bar

Notice "$" syntax in filters for referencing queries; comma-separated tags excludeTags allows to exclude certain queries by tagging. Overall the idea is similar to excluding fq in facets. Note, that filtering is applied to the subordinate clause (<someParents>), and the intersection result is joined to the children.

All Children Syntax

When subordinate clause (<someParents>) is omitted, it’s parsed as a segmented and cached filter for children documents. More precisely, q={!child of=<blockMask>} is equivalent to q=*:* -<blockMask>.

Block Join Parent Query Parser

This parser takes a query that matches child documents and returns their parents.

The syntax for this parser is similar to the child parser: q={!parent which=<blockMask>}<someChildren>.

  • The inner subordinate query string (someChildren) must be a query that will match some child documents

  • The which parameter must be a query string to use as a Block Mask — typically a query that matches the set of all possible parent documents

The resulting query will match all documents which do match the <blockMask> query and are parents (or ancestors) of the documents matched by <someChildren>.

Again using the example documents above, we can construct a query such as q={!parent which="content_type:parent"}comments:SolrCloud. We get this document in response:

<result name="response" numFound="1" start="0">
  <doc>
    <str name="id">1</str>
    <arr name="content_type"><str>parent</str></arr>
    <arr name="title"><str>Solr has block join support</str></arr>
  </doc>
</result>

The query for someChildren MUST NOT match any documents matched by the Block Mask or your query may result in an Error:

Child query must not match same docs with parent filter. Combine them as must clauses (+) to find a problem doc.

You can search for q=+(blockMask) +(someChildren) to find a cause.

Filtering and Tagging

The {!parent} query supports filters and excludeTags local parameters like the following:

?q={!parent which=<blockMask> filters=$childfq excludeTags=certain}<someChildren>
&childfq=COLOR:Red
&childfq=SIZE:XL
&childfq={!tag=certain}PRINT:Hatched

This is equivalent to:

q={!parent which=<blockMask>}+<someChildren> +COLOR:Red +SIZE:XL

Notice the "$" syntax in filters for referencing queries. Comma-separated tags in excludeTags allow excluding certain queries by tagging. Overall the idea is similar to excluding fq in facets. Note that filtering is applied to the subordinate clause (<someChildren>) first, and the intersection result is joined to the parents.

Scoring with the Block Join Parent Query Parser

You can optionally use the score local parameter to return scores of the subordinate query. The values to use for this parameter define the type of aggregation, which are avg (average), max (maximum), min (minimum), total (sum). Implicit default is none which returns 0.0.

All Parents Syntax

When subordinate clause (<someChildren>) is omitted, it’s parsed as a segmented and cached filter for all parent documents, or more precisely q={!parent which=<blockMask>} is equivalent to q=<blockMask>.

Block Masks: The of and which local params

The purpose of the "Block Mask" query specified as either an of or which param (depending on the parser used) is to identy the set of all documents in the index which should be treated as "parents" (or their ancestors) and which documents should be treated as "children". This is important because in the "on disk" index, the relationships are flattened into "blocks" of documents, so the of / which params are needed to serve as a "mask" against the flat document blocks to identify the boundaries of every hierarchical relationship.

In the example queries above, we were able to use a very simple Block Mask of doc_type:parent because our data is very simple: every document is either a parent or a child So this query string easily distinguishes all of our documents.

A common mistake is to try and use a which parameter that is more restrictive then the set of all parent documents, in order to filter the parents that are matched, as in this bad example:

// BAD! DO NOT USE!
q={!parent which="title:join"}comments:support

This type of query will frequently not work the way you might expect. Since the which param only identifies some of the "parent" documents, the resulting query can match "parent" documents it should not, because it will mistakenly identify all documents which do not match the which="title:join" Block Mask as children of the next "parent" document in the index (that does match this Mask).

A similar problematic situation can arise when mixing parent/child documents with "simple" documents that have no children and do not match the query used to identify 'parent' documents. For example, if we add the following document to our existing parent/child example documents:

<add>
  <doc>
    <field name="id">0</field>
    <field name="content_type">plain</field>
    <field name="title">Lucene and Solr are cool</field>
  </doc>
</add>

…​then our simple doc_type:parent Block Mask would no longer be adequate. We would instead need to use *:* -doc_type:child or doc_type:(simple parent) to prevent our "simple" document from mistakenly being treated as a "child" of an adjacent "parent" document.

The Searching Nested Documents section contains more detailed examples of specifing Block Mask queries with non trivial hierarchicies of documents.

Boolean Query Parser

The BoolQParser creates a Lucene BooleanQuery which is a boolean combination of other queries. Sub-queries along with their typed occurrences indicate how documents will be matched and scored.

Parameters

must
A list of queries that must appear in matching documents and contribute to the score.
must_not
A list of queries that must not appear in matching documents.
should
A list of queries should appear in matching documents. For a BooleanQuery with no must queries, one or more should queries must match a document for the BooleanQuery to match.
filter
A list of queries that must appear in matching documents. However, unlike must, the score of filter queries is ignored. Also, these queries are cached in filter cache. To avoid caching add either cache=false as local parameter, or "cache":"false" property to underneath Query DLS Object.
excludeTags
Comma separated list of tags for excluding queries from parameters above. See explanation below.

Examples

{!bool must=foo must=bar}
{!bool filter=foo should=bar}

Parameters might also be multivalue references. The former example above is equivalent to:

q={!bool must=$ref}&ref=foo&ref=bar

Referred queries might be excluded via tags. Overall the idea is similar to excluding fq in facets.

q={!bool must=$ref excludeTags=t2}&ref={!tag=t1}foo&ref={!tag=t2}bar

Since the later query is excluded via t2, the resulting query is equivalent to:

q={!bool must=foo}

Boost Query Parser

BoostQParser extends the QParserPlugin and creates a boosted query from the input value. The main value is any query to be "wrapped" and "boosted" — only documents which match that query will match the final query produced by this parser. Parameter b is a function to be evaluated against each document that matches the original query, and the result of the function will be multiplied into into the final score for that document.

Boost Query Parser Examples

Creates a query name:foo which is boosted (scores are multiplied) by the function query log(popularity):

q={!boost b=log(popularity)}name:foo

Creates a query name:foo which has it’s scores multiplied by the inverse of the numeric price field — effectively "demoting" documents which have a high price by lowering their final score:

// NOTE: we "add 1" to the denominator to prevent divide by zero
q={!boost b=div(1,add(1,price))}name:foo

The query(…​) function is particularly useful for situations where you want to multiply (or divide) the score for each document matching your main query by the score that document would have from another query.

This example uses local parameter variables to create a query for name:foo which is boosted by the scores from the independently specified query category:electronics:

q={!boost b=query($my_boost)}name:foo
my_boost=category:electronics

Collapsing Query Parser

The CollapsingQParser is really a post filter that provides more performant field collapsing than Solr’s standard approach when the number of distinct groups in the result set is high.

This parser collapses the result set to a single document per group before it forwards the result set to the rest of the search components. So all downstream components (faceting, highlighting, etc.) will work with the collapsed result set.

Details about using the CollapsingQParser can be found in the section Collapse and Expand Results.

Complex Phrase Query Parser

The ComplexPhraseQParser provides support for wildcards, ORs, etc., inside phrase queries using Lucene’s ComplexPhraseQueryParser.

Under the covers, this query parser makes use of the Span group of queries, e.g., spanNear, spanOr, etc., and is subject to the same limitations as that family or parsers.

Parameters

inOrder
Set to true to force phrase queries to match terms in the order specified. The default is true.
df
The default search field.

Examples

{!complexphrase inOrder=true}name:"Jo* Smith"
{!complexphrase inOrder=false}name:"(john jon jonathan~) peters*"

A mix of ordered and unordered complex phrase queries:

+_query_:"{!complexphrase inOrder=true}manu:\"a* c*\"" +_query_:"{!complexphrase inOrder=false df=name}\"bla* pla*\""

Complex Phrase Parser Limitations

Performance is sensitive to the number of unique terms that are associated with a pattern. For instance, searching for "a*" will form a large OR clause (technically a SpanOr with many terms) for all of the terms in your index for the indicated field that start with the single letter 'a'. It may be prudent to restrict wildcards to at least two or preferably three letters as a prefix. Allowing very short prefixes may result in to many low-quality documents being returned.

Notice that it also supports leading wildcards "*a" as well with consequent performance implications. Applying ReversedWildcardFilterFactory in index-time analysis is usually a good idea.

MaxBooleanClauses with Complex Phrase Parser

You may need to increase MaxBooleanClauses in solrconfig.xml as a result of the term expansion above:

<maxBooleanClauses>4096</maxBooleanClauses>

This property is described in more detail in the section Query Sizing and Warming.

Stopwords with Complex Phrase Parser

It is recommended not to use stopword elimination with this query parser.

Lets say we add the terms the, up, and to to stopwords.txt for your collection, and index a document containing the text "Stores up to 15,000 songs, 25,00 photos, or 150 yours of video" in a field named "features".

While the query below does not use this parser:

 q=features:"Stores up to 15,000"

the document is returned. The next query that does use the Complex Phrase Query Parser, as in this query:

 q=features:"sto* up to 15*"&defType=complexphrase

does not return that document because SpanNearQuery has no good way to handle stopwords in a way analogous to PhraseQuery. If you must remove stopwords for your use case, use a custom filter factory or perhaps a customized synonyms filter that reduces given stopwords to some impossible token.

Escaping with Complex Phrase Parser

Special care has to be given when escaping: clauses between double quotes (usually whole query) is parsed twice, these parts have to be escaped as twice, e.g., "foo\\: bar\\^".

Field Query Parser

The FieldQParser extends the QParserPlugin and creates a field query from the input value, applying text analysis and constructing a phrase query if appropriate. The parameter f is the field to be queried.

Example:

{!field f=myfield}Foo Bar

This example creates a phrase query with "foo" followed by "bar" (assuming the analyzer for myfield is a text field with an analyzer that splits on whitespace and lowercase terms). This is generally equivalent to the Lucene query parser expression myfield:"Foo Bar".

Filters Query Parser

The syntax is:

q={!filters param=$fqs excludeTags=sample}field:text&
fqs=COLOR:Red&
fqs=SIZE:XL&
fqs={!tag=sample}BRAND:Foo

which is equivalent to:

q=+field:text +COLOR:Red +SIZE:XL

param local parameter uses "$" syntax to refer to a few queries, where excludeTags may omit some of them.

Function Query Parser

The FunctionQParser extends the QParserPlugin and creates a function query from the input value. This is only one way to use function queries in Solr; for another, more integrated, approach, see the section on Function Queries.

Example:

{!func}log(foo)

Function Range Query Parser

The FunctionRangeQParser extends the QParserPlugin and creates a range query over a function. This is also referred to as frange, as seen in the examples below.

Parameters

l
The lower bound. This parameter is optional.
u
The upper bound. This parameter is optional.
incl
Include the lower bound. This parameter is optional. The default is true.
incu
Include the upper bound. This parameter is optional. The default is true.

Examples

{!frange l=1000 u=50000}myfield
 fq={!frange l=0 u=2.2} sum(user_ranking,editor_ranking)

Both of these examples restrict the results by a range of values found in a declared field or a function query. In the second example, we’re doing a sum calculation, and then defining only values between 0 and 2.2 should be returned to the user.

For more information about range queries over functions, see Yonik Seeley’s introductory blog post Ranges over Functions in Solr 1.4.

Graph Query Parser

The graph query parser does a breadth first, cyclic aware, graph traversal of all documents that are "reachable" from a starting set of root documents identified by a wrapped query.

The graph is built according to linkages between documents based on the terms found in from and to fields that you specify as part of the query.

Supported field types are point fields with docValues enabled, or string fields with indexed=true or docValues=true.

For string fields which are indexed=false and docValues=true, please refer to the javadocs for DocValuesTermsQuery for its performance characteristics so indexed=true will perform better for most use-cases.

Graph Query Parameters

to
The field name of matching documents to inspect to identify outgoing edges for graph traversal. Defaults to edge_ids.
from
The field name to of candidate documents to inspect to identify incoming graph edges. Defaults to node_id.
traversalFilter
An optional query that can be supplied to limit the scope of documents that are traversed.
maxDepth
Integer specifying how deep the breadth first search of the graph should go beginning with the initial query. Defaults to -1 (unlimited).
returnRoot
Boolean to indicate if the documents that matched the original query (to define the starting points for graph) should be included in the final results. Defaults to true.
returnOnlyLeaf
Boolean that indicates if the results of the query should be filtered so that only documents with no outgoing edges are returned. Defaults to false.
useAutn
Boolean that indicates if an Automatons should be compiled for each iteration of the breadth first search, which may be faster for some graphs. Defaults to false.

Graph Query Limitations

The graph parser only works in single node Solr installations, or with SolrCloud collections that use exactly 1 shard.

Graph Query Examples

To understand how the graph parser works, consider the following Directed Cyclic Graph, containing 8 nodes (A to H) and 9 edges (1 to 9):

image

One way to model this graph as Solr documents, would be to create one document per node, with mutivalued fields identifying the incoming and outgoing edges for each node:

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' 'http://localhost:8983/solr/my_graph/update?commit=true' --data-binary '[
  {"id":"A","foo":  7, "out_edge":["1","9"],  "in_edge":["4","2"]  },
  {"id":"B","foo": 12, "out_edge":["3","6"],  "in_edge":["1"]      },
  {"id":"C","foo": 10, "out_edge":["5","2"],  "in_edge":["9"]      },
  {"id":"D","foo": 20, "out_edge":["4","7"],  "in_edge":["3","5"]  },
  {"id":"E","foo": 17, "out_edge":[],         "in_edge":["6"]      },
  {"id":"F","foo": 11, "out_edge":[],         "in_edge":["7"]      },
  {"id":"G","foo":  7, "out_edge":["8"],      "in_edge":[]         },
  {"id":"H","foo": 10, "out_edge":[],         "in_edge":["8"]      }
]'

With the model shown above, the following query demonstrates a simple traversal of all nodes reachable from node A:

http://localhost:8983/solr/my_graph/query?fl=id&q={!graph+from=in_edge+to=out_edge}id:A
"response":{"numFound":6,"start":0,"docs":[
   { "id":"A" },
   { "id":"B" },
   { "id":"C" },
   { "id":"D" },
   { "id":"E" },
   { "id":"F" } ]
}

We can also use the traversalFilter to limit the graph traversal to only nodes with maximum value of 15 in the foo field. In this case that means D, E, and F are excluded – F has a value of foo=11, but it is unreachable because the traversal skipped D:

http://localhost:8983/solr/my_graph/query?fl=id&q={!graph+from=in_edge+to=out_edge+traversalFilter='foo:[*+TO+15]'}id:A
...
"response":{"numFound":3,"start":0,"docs":[
   { "id":"A" },
   { "id":"B" },
   { "id":"C" } ]
}

The examples shown so far have all used a query for a single document ("id:A") as the root node for the graph traversal, but any query can be used to identify multiple documents to use as root nodes. The next example demonstrates using the maxDepth parameter to find all nodes that are at most one edge away from an root node with a value in the foo field less then or equal to 10:

http://localhost:8983/solr/my_graph/query?fl=id&q={!graph+from=in_edge+to=out_edge+maxDepth=1}foo:[*+TO+10]
...
"response":{"numFound":6,"start":0,"docs":[
   { "id":"A" },
   { "id":"B" },
   { "id":"C" },
   { "id":"D" },
   { "id":"G" },
   { "id":"H" } ]
}

Simplified Models

The Document & Field modeling used in the above examples enumerated all of the outgoing and income edges for each node explicitly, to help demonstrate exactly how the "from" and "to" parameters work, and to give you an idea of what is possible. With multiple sets of fields like these for identifying incoming and outgoing edges, it’s possible to model many independent Directed Graphs that contain some or all of the documents in your collection.

But in many cases it can also be possible to drastically simplify the model used.

For example, the same graph shown in the diagram above can be modeled by Solr Documents that represent each node and know only the ids of the nodes they link to, without knowing anything about the incoming links:

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' 'http://localhost:8983/solr/alt_graph/update?commit=true' --data-binary '[
  {"id":"A","foo":  7, "out_edge":["B","C"] },
  {"id":"B","foo": 12, "out_edge":["E","D"] },
  {"id":"C","foo": 10, "out_edge":["A","D"] },
  {"id":"D","foo": 20, "out_edge":["A","F"] },
  {"id":"E","foo": 17, "out_edge":[]        },
  {"id":"F","foo": 11, "out_edge":[]        },
  {"id":"G","foo":  7, "out_edge":["H"]     },
  {"id":"H","foo": 10, "out_edge":[]        }
  ]'

With this alternative document model, all of the same queries demonstrated above can still be executed, simply by changing the “from” parameter to replace the “in_edge” field with the “id” field:

http://localhost:8983/solr/alt_graph/query?fl=id&q={!graph+from=id+to=out_edge+maxDepth=1}foo:[*+TO+10]
...
"response":{"numFound":6,"start":0,"docs":[
   { "id":"A" },
   { "id":"B" },
   { "id":"C" },
   { "id":"D" },
   { "id":"G" },
   { "id":"H" } ]
}

Hash Range Query Parser

The hash range query parser will return documents that have a field that contains a value that would be hashed to a particular range. This is used by the join query when using method=crossCollection. The hash rang query parser has a per segment cache for each field that this query parser will operate on.

When specifying a min/max hash range and a field name with the hash range query parser, only documents who contain a field value that hashes into that range will be returned. If you want to query for a very large result set, you can query for various hash ranges to return a fraction of the documents with each range request. In the cross collection join case, the hash_range query parser is used to ensure that each shard only gets the set of join keys that would end up on that shard.

This query parser uses the MurmurHash3_x86_32. This is the same as the default hashing for the default composite ID router in Solr.

Hash Range Parameters

f
The field name to operate on. This field should have docValues enabled and should be single-valued
l
The lower bound of the hash range for the query
u
The upper bound for the hash range for the query

Hash Range Example

{!hash_range f="field_name" l="0" u="12345"}

Hash Range Cache Config

The hash range query parser uses a special cache to improve the speedup of the queries. The following should be added to the solrconfig.xml for the various fields that you want to perform the hash range query on. Note the name of the cache should be the field name prefixed by "hash_".

<cache name="hash_field_name"
       class="solr.LRUCache"
       size="128"
       initialSize="0"
       regenerator="solr.NoOpRegenerator"/>

Join Query Parser

The Join query parser allows users to run queries that normalize relationships between documents. Solr runs a subquery of the user’s choosing (the v param), identifies all the values that matching documents have in a field of interest (the from param), and then returns documents where those values are contained in a second field of interest (the to param).

In practice, these semantics are much like "inner queries" in a SQL engine. As an example, consider the Solr query below:

/solr/techproducts/select?q={!join from=manu_id_s to=id}title:ipod

This query, which returns a document for each manufacturer that makes a product with "ipod" in the title, is semantically identical to the SQL query below:

SELECT *
FROM techproducts
WHERE id IN (
    SELECT manu_id_s
    FROM techproducts
    WHERE title='ipod'
  )

The join operation is done on a term basis, so the from and to fields must use compatible field types. For example: joining between a StrField and a IntPointField will not work. Likewise joining between a StrField and a TextField that uses LowerCaseFilterFactory will only work for values that are already lower cased in the string field.

Parameters

This query parser takes the following parameters:

from
The name of a field which contains values to look for in the "to" field. Can be single or multi-valued, but must have a field type compatible with the field represented in the "to" field. This parameter is required.
to
The name of a field whose value(s) will be checked against those found in the "from" field. Can be single or multi-valued, but must have a field type compatible with the "from" field. This parameter is required.
fromIndex
The name of the index to run the "from" query (v parameter) on and where "from" values are gathered. Must be located on the same node as the core processing the request. This parameter is optional; it defaults to the value of the processing core if not specified. See Joining Across Single Shard Collections or Cross Collection Join below for more information.
score

An optional parameter that instructs Solr to return information about the "from" query scores. The value of this parameter controls what type of aggregation information is returned. Options include avg (average), max (maximum), min (minimum), total (total), or none.

If method is not specified but score is, then the dvWithScore method is used. If method is specified and is not dvWithScore, then the score value is ignored. See the method parameter documentation below for more details.

method

An optional parameter used to determine which of several query implementations should be used by Solr. Options are restricted to: index, dvWithScore, and topLevelDV. If unspecified the default value is index, unless the score parameter is present which overrides it to dvWithScore. Each implementation has its own performance characteristics, and users are encouraged to experiment to determine which implementation is most performant for their use-case. Details and performance heuristics are given below.

index the default method unless the score parameter is specified. Uses the terms index structures to process the request. Performance scales with the cardinality and number of postings (term occurrences) in the "from" field. Consider this method when the "from" field has low cardinality, when the "to" side returns a large number of documents, or when sporadic post-commit slowdowns cannot be tolerated (this is a disadvantage of other methods that index avoids).

dvWithScore returns an optional "score" statistic alongside result documents. Uses docValues structures if available, but falls back to the field cache when necessary. The first access to the field cache slows down the initial requests following a commit and takes up additional space on the JVM heap, so docValues are recommended in most situations. Performance scales linearly with the number of values matched in the "from" field. This method must be used if score information is required, and should also be considered when the "from" query matches few documents, regardless of the number of "to" side documents returned.

dvWithScore and single value numerics

The dvWithScore method doesn’t support single value numeric fields. Users migrating from versions prior to 7.0 are encouraged to change field types to string and rebuild indexes during migration.

topLevelDV can only be used when to and from fields have docValues data, and does not currently support numeric fields. Uses top-level docValues data structures to find results. These data structures outperform other methods as the number of values matched in the from field grows high. But they are also expensive to build and need to be lazily populated after each commit, causing a sometimes-noticeable slowdown on the first query to use them after each commit. If you commit frequently and your use-case can tolerate a static warming query, consider adding one to solrconfig.xml so that this work is done as a part of the commit itself and not attached directly to user requests. Consider this method when the "from" query matches a large number of documents and the "to" result set is small to moderate in size, but only if sporadic post-commit slowness is tolerable.

Joining Across Single Shard Collections

You can also specify a fromIndex parameter to join with a field from another core or a single shard collection. If running in SolrCloud mode, then the collection specified in the fromIndex parameter must have a single shard and a replica on all Solr nodes where the collection you’re joining to has a replica.

Let’s consider an example where you want to use a Solr join query to filter movies by directors that have won an Oscar. Specifically, imagine we have two collections with the following fields:

movies: id, title, director_id, …​

movie_directors: id, name, has_oscar, …​

To filter movies by directors that have won an Oscar using a Solr join on the movie_directors collection, you can send the following filter query to the movies collection:

fq={!join from=id fromIndex=movie_directors to=director_id}has_oscar:true

Notice that the query criteria of the filter (has_oscar:true) is based on a field in the collection specified using fromIndex. Keep in mind that you cannot return fields from the fromIndex collection using join queries, you can only use the fields for filtering results in the "to" collection (movies).

Next, let’s understand how these collections need to be deployed in your cluster. Imagine the movies collection is deployed to a four node SolrCloud cluster and has two shards with a replication factor of two. Specifically, the movies collection has replicas on the following four nodes:

node 1: movies_shard1_replica1

node 2: movies_shard1_replica2

node 3: movies_shard2_replica1

node 4: movies_shard2_replica2

To use the movie_directors collection in Solr join queries with the movies collection, it needs to have a replica on each of the four nodes. In other words, movie_directors must have one shard and replication factor of four:

node 1: movie_directors_shard1_replica1

node 2: movie_directors_shard1_replica2

node 3: movie_directors_shard1_replica3

node 4: movie_directors_shard1_replica4

At query time, the JoinQParser will access the local replica of the movie_directors collection to perform the join. If a local replica is not available or active, then the query will fail. At this point, it should be clear that since you’re limited to a single shard and the data must be replicated across all nodes where it is needed, this approach works better with smaller data sets where there is a one-to-many relationship between the from collection and the to collection. Moreover, if you add a replica to the to collection, then you also need to add a replica for the from collection.

For more information, Erick Erickson has written a blog post about join performance titled Solr and Joins.

Cross Collection Join

The Cross Collection Join Filter is a method for the join parser that will execute a query against a remote Solr collection to get back a set of join keys that will be used to as a filter query against the local Solr collection.

The crossCollection join query will create an CrossCollectionQuery object. The CrossCollectionQuery will first query a remote Solr collection and get back a streaming expression result of the join keys. As the join keys are streamed to the node, a bitset of the matching documents in the local index is built up. This avoids keeping the full set of join keys in memory at any given time. This bitset is then inserted into the filter cache upon successful execution as with the normal behavior of the Solr filter cache.

If the local index is sharded according to the join key field, the cross collection join can leverage a secondary query parser called the "hash_range" query parser. The hash_range query parser is responsible for returning only the documents that hash to a given range of values. This allows the CrossCollectionQuery to query the remote Solr collection and return only the join keys that would match a specific shard in the local Solr collection. This has the benefit of making sure that network traffic doesn’t increase as the number of shards increases and allows for much greater scalability.

The CrossCollection join query works with both String and Point types of fields. The fields that are being used for the join key must be single-valued and have docValues enabled.

It’s advised to shard the local collection by the join key as this allows for the optimization mentioned above to be utilized.

The cross collection join queries should not be generally used as part of the q parameter, but rather it is designed to be used as a filter query (fq parameter) to ensure proper caching.

The remote Solr collection that is being queried should have a single-valued field for the join key with docValues enabled.

The remote Solr collection does not have any specific sharding requirements.

Join Query Parser Definition in solrconfig.xml

The cross collection join has some configuration options that can be specified in solrconfig.xml.

routerField
If the documents are routed to shards using the CompositeID router by the join field, then that field name should be specified in the configuration here. This will allow the parser to optimize the resulting HashRange query.
solrUrl
If specified, this array of strings specifies the white listed Solr URLs that you can pass to the solrUrl query parameter. Without this configuration the solrUrl parameter cannot be used. This restriction is necessary to prevent an attacker from using Solr to explore the network.
  <queryParser name="join" class="org.apache.solr.search.JoinQParserPlugin">
    <str name="routerField">product_id_s</str>
    <arr name="allowSolrUrls">
      <str>http://othersolr.example.com:8983/solr</str>
    </arr>
  </queryParser>

Cross Collection Join Query Parameters

fromIndex
The name of the external Solr collection to be queried to retrieve the set of join key values (required).
zkHost
The connection string to be used to connect to ZooKeeper. zkHost and solrUrl are both optional parameters, and at most one of them should be specified. If neither zkHost nor solrUrl are specified, the local ZooKeeper cluster will be used. (optional).
solrUrl
The URL of the external Solr node to be queried. Must be a character for character exact match of a whitelisted url. (optional, disabled by default for security).
from
The join key field name in the external collection (required).
to
The join key field name in the local collection.
v
The query substituted in as a local param. This is the query string that will match documents in the remote collection.
routed
If true, the cross collection join query will use each shard’s hash range to determine the set of join keys to retrieve for that shard. This parameter improves the performance of the cross-collection join, but it depends on the local collection being routed by the to field. If this parameter is not specified, the cross collection join query will try to determine the correct value automatically.
ttl
The length of time that a cross collection join query in the cache will be considered valid, in seconds. Defaults to 3600 (one hour). The cross collection join query will not be aware of changes to the remote collection, so if the remote collection is updated, cached cross collection queries may give inaccurate results. After the ttl period has expired, the cross collection join query will re-execute the join against the remote collection.
Other Parameters
Any normal Solr query parameter can also be specified/passed through as a local param.

Cross Collection Query Examples

http://localhost:8983/solr/localCollection/query?fl=id&q={!join method="crossCollection" fromIndex="otherCollection" from="fromField" to="toField" v="*:*"}

Lucene Query Parser

The LuceneQParser extends the QParserPlugin by parsing Solr’s variant on the Lucene QueryParser syntax. This is effectively the same query parser that is used in Lucene. It uses the operators q.op, the default operator ("OR" or "AND") and df, the default field name.

Example:

{!lucene q.op=AND df=text}myfield:foo +bar -baz

For more information about the syntax for the Lucene Query Parser, see the Classic QueryParser javadocs.

Learning To Rank Query Parser

The LTRQParserPlugin is a special purpose parser for reranking the top results of a simple query using a more complex ranking query which is based on a machine learnt model.

Example:

{!ltr model=myModel reRankDocs=100}

Details about using the LTRQParserPlugin can be found in the Learning To Rank section.

Max Score Query Parser

The MaxScoreQParser extends the LuceneQParser but returns the Max score from the clauses. It does this by wrapping all SHOULD clauses in a DisjunctionMaxQuery with tie=1.0. Any MUST or PROHIBITED clauses are passed through as-is. Non-boolean queries, e.g., NumericRange falls-through to the LuceneQParser parser behavior.

Example:

{!maxscore tie=0.01}C OR (D AND E)

More Like This Query Parser

MLTQParser enables retrieving documents that are similar to a given document. It uses Lucene’s existing MoreLikeThis logic and also works in SolrCloud mode. The document identifier used here is the unique id value and not the Lucene internal document id. The list of returned documents excludes the queried document.

This query parser takes the following parameters:

qf
Specifies the fields to use for similarity.
mintf
Specifies the Minimum Term Frequency, the frequency below which terms will be ignored in the source document.
mindf
Specifies the Minimum Document Frequency, the frequency at which words will be ignored when they do not occur in at least this many documents.
maxdf
Specifies the Maximum Document Frequency, the frequency at which words will be ignored when they occur in more than this many documents.
minwl
Sets the minimum word length below which words will be ignored.
maxwl
Sets the maximum word length above which words will be ignored.
maxqt
Sets the maximum number of query terms that will be included in any generated query.
maxntp
Sets the maximum number of tokens to parse in each example document field that is not stored with TermVector support.
boost
Specifies if the query will be boosted by the interesting term relevance. It can be either "true" or "false".

Examples

Find documents like the document with id=1 and using the name field for similarity.

{!mlt qf=name}1

Adding more constraints to what qualifies as similar using mintf and mindf.

{!mlt qf=name mintf=2 mindf=3}1

Nested Query Parser

The NestedParser extends the QParserPlugin and creates a nested query, with the ability for that query to redefine its type via local parameters. This is useful in specifying defaults in configuration and letting clients indirectly reference them.

Example:

{!query defType=func v=$q1}

If the q1 parameter is price, then the query would be a function query on the price field. If the q1 parameter is \{!lucene}inStock:true}} then a term query is created from the Lucene syntax string that matches documents with inStock=true. These parameters would be defined in solrconfig.xml, in the defaults section:

<lst name="defaults">
  <str name="q1">{!lucene}inStock:true</str>
</lst>

For more information about the possibilities of nested queries, see Yonik Seeley’s blog post Nested Queries in Solr.

Payload Query Parsers

These query parsers utilize payloads encoded on terms during indexing.

The main query, for both of these parsers, is parsed straightforwardly from the field type’s query analysis into a SpanQuery. The generated SpanQuery will be either a SpanTermQuery or an ordered, zero slop SpanNearQuery, depending on how many tokens are emitted. Payloads can be encoded on terms using either the DelimitedPayloadTokenFilter or the NumericPayloadTokenFilter. The payload using parsers are:

  • PayloadScoreQParser

  • PayloadCheckQParser

Payload Score Parser

PayloadScoreQParser incorporates each matching term’s numeric (integer or float) payloads into the scores.

This parser accepts the following parameters:

f
The field to use. This parameter is required.
func
The payload function. The options are: min, max, average, or sum. This parameter is required.
operator
A search operator. The options are or and phrase, which is the default. This defines if the search query should be an OR query or a phrase query.
includeSpanScore
If true, multiples the computed payload factor by the score of the original query. If false, the default, the computed payload factor is the score.

Examples

{!payload_score f=my_field_dpf v=some_term func=max}
{!payload_score f=payload_field func=sum operator=or}A B C

Payload Check Parser

PayloadCheckQParser only matches when the matching terms also have the specified payloads.

This parser accepts the following parameters:

f
The field to use (required).
payloads

A space-separated list of payloads that must match the query terms (required)

Each specified payload will be encoded using the encoder determined from the field type and encoded accordingly for matching.

DelimitedPayloadTokenFilter 'identity' encoded payloads also work here, as well as float and integer encoded ones.

Example

{!payload_check f=words_dps payloads="VERB NOUN"}searching stuff

Prefix Query Parser

PrefixQParser extends the QParserPlugin by creating a prefix query from the input value. Currently no analysis or value transformation is done to create this prefix query.

The parameter is f, the field. The string after the prefix declaration is treated as a wildcard query.

Example:

{!prefix f=myfield}foo

This would be generally equivalent to the Lucene query parser expression myfield:foo*.

Raw Query Parser

RawQParser extends the QParserPlugin by creating a term query from the input value without any text analysis or transformation. This is useful in debugging, or when raw terms are returned from the terms component (this is not the default).

The only parameter is f, which defines the field to search.

Example:

{!raw f=myfield}Foo Bar

This example constructs the query: TermQuery(Term("myfield","Foo Bar")).

For easy filter construction to drill down in faceting, the TermQParserPlugin is recommended.

For full analysis on all fields, including text fields, you may want to use the FieldQParserPlugin.

Ranking Query Parser

The RankQParserPlugin is a faster implementation of ranking-related features of FunctionQParser and can work together with specialized field of RankFields type.

It allows queries like:

http://localhost:8983/solr/techproducts?q=memory _query_:{!rank f='pagerank', function='log' scalingFactor='1.2'}

Re-Ranking Query Parser

The ReRankQParserPlugin is a special purpose parser for Re-Ranking the top results of a simple query using a more complex ranking query.

Details about using the ReRankQParserPlugin can be found in the Query Re-Ranking section.

Simple Query Parser

The Simple query parser in Solr is based on Lucene’s SimpleQueryParser. This query parser is designed to allow users to enter queries however they want, and it will do its best to interpret the query and return results.

This parser takes the following parameters:

q.operators

Comma-separated list of names of parsing operators to enable. By default, all operations are enabled, and this parameter can be used to effectively disable specific operators as needed, by excluding them from the list. Passing an empty string with this parameter disables all operators.

NameOperatorDescriptionExample query
AND+Specifies ANDtoken1+token2
OR|Specifies ORtoken1|token2
NOT-Specifies NOT-token3
PREFIX*Specifies a prefix queryterm*
PHRASE"Creates a phrase"term1 term2"
PRECEDENCE( )Specifies precedence; tokens inside the parenthesis will be analyzed first. Otherwise, normal order is left to right.token1 + (token2 | token3)
ESCAPE\Put it in front of operators to match them literallyC\+\+
WHITESPACEspace or [\r\t\n]

Delimits tokens on whitespace. If not enabled, whitespace splitting will not be performed prior to analysis – usually most desirable.

Not splitting whitespace is a unique feature of this parser that enables multi-word synonyms to work. However, it probably actually won’t unless synonyms are configured to normalize instead of expand to all that match a given synonym. Such a configuration requires normalizing synonyms at both index time and query time. Solr’s analysis screen can help here.

term1 term2
FUZZY

~

~N

At the end of terms, specifies a fuzzy query.

"N" is optional and may be either "1" or "2" (the default)

term~1
NEAR~NAt the end of phrases, specifies a NEAR query"term1 term2"~5
q.op
Defines the default operator to use if none is defined by the user. Allowed values are AND and OR. OR is used if none is specified.
qf
A list of query fields and boosts to use when building the query.
df
Defines the default field if none is defined in the Schema, or overrides the default field if it is already defined.

Any errors in syntax are ignored and the query parser will interpret queries as best it can. However, this can lead to odd results in some cases.

Spatial Query Parsers

There are two spatial QParsers in Solr: geofilt and bbox. But there are other ways to query spatially: using the frange parser with a distance function, using the standard (lucene) query parser with the range syntax to pick the corners of a rectangle, or with RPT and BBoxField you can use the standard query parser but use a special syntax within quotes that allows you to pick the spatial predicate.

All these options are documented further in the section Spatial Search.

Surround Query Parser

The SurroundQParser enables the Surround query syntax, which provides proximity search functionality. There are two positional operators: w creates an ordered span query and n creates an unordered one. Both operators take a numeric value to indicate distance between two terms. The default is 1, and the maximum is 99.

Note that the query string is not analyzed in any way.

Example:

{!surround} 3w(foo, bar)

This example finds documents where the terms "foo" and "bar" are no more than 3 terms away from each other (i.e., no more than 2 terms between them).

This query parser will also accept boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT, in either upper- or lowercase), wildcards, quoting for phrase searches, and boosting. The w and n operators can also be expressed in upper- or lowercase.

The non-unary operators (everything but NOT) support both infix (a AND b AND c) and prefix AND(a, b, c) notation.

Switch Query Parser

SwitchQParser is a QParserPlugin that acts like a "switch" or "case" statement.

The primary input string is trimmed and then prefixed with case. for use as a key to lookup a "switch case" in the parser’s local params. If a matching local param is found the resulting param value will then be parsed as a subquery, and returned as the parse result.

The case local param can be optionally be specified as a switch case to match missing (or blank) input strings. The default local param can optionally be specified as a default case to use if the input string does not match any other switch case local params. If default is not specified, then any input which does not match a switch case local param will result in a syntax error.

In the examples below, the result of each query is "XXX":

{!switch case.foo=XXX case.bar=zzz case.yak=qqq}foo
The extra whitespace between } and bar is trimmed automatically.
{!switch case.foo=qqq case.bar=XXX case.yak=zzz} bar
The result will fallback to the default.
{!switch case.foo=qqq case.bar=zzz default=XXX}asdf
No input uses the value for case instead.
{!switch case=XXX case.bar=zzz case.yak=qqq}

A practical usage of this parser, is in specifying appends filter query (fq) parameters in the configuration of a SearchHandler, to provide a fixed set of filter options for clients using custom parameter names.

Using the example configuration below, clients can optionally specify the custom parameters in_stock and shipping to override the default filtering behavior, but are limited to the specific set of legal values (shipping=any|free, in_stock=yes|no|all).

<requestHandler name="/select" class="solr.SearchHandler">
  <lst name="defaults">
    <str name="in_stock">yes</str>
    <str name="shipping">any</str>
  </lst>
  <lst name="appends">
    <str name="fq">{!switch case.all='*:*'
                            case.yes='inStock:true'
                            case.no='inStock:false'
                            v=$in_stock}</str>
    <str name="fq">{!switch case.any='*:*'
                            case.free='shipping_cost:0.0'
                            v=$shipping}</str>
  </lst>
</requestHandler>

Term Query Parser

TermQParser extends the QParserPlugin by creating a single term query from the input value equivalent to readableToIndexed(). This is useful for generating filter queries from the external human readable terms returned by the faceting or terms components. The only parameter is f, for the field.

Example:

{!term f=weight}1.5

For text fields, no analysis is done since raw terms are already returned from the faceting and terms components. To apply analysis to text fields as well, see the Field Query Parser, above.

If no analysis or transformation is desired for any type of field, see the Raw Query Parser, above.

Terms Query Parser

TermsQParser functions similarly to the Term Query Parser but takes in multiple values separated by commas and returns documents matching any of the specified values.

This can be useful for generating filter queries from the external human readable terms returned by the faceting or terms components, and may be more efficient in some cases than using the Standard Query Parser to generate a boolean query since the default implementation method avoids scoring.

This query parser takes the following parameters:

f
The field on which to search. This parameter is required.
separator
Separator to use when parsing the input. If set to " " (a single blank space), will trim additional white space from the input terms. Defaults to a comma (,).
method

An optional parameter used to determine which of several query implementations should be used by Solr. Options are restricted to: termsFilter, booleanQuery, automaton, docValuesTermsFilterPerSegment, docValuesTermsFilterTopLevel or docValuesTermsFilter. If unspecified, the default value is termsFilter. Each implementation has its own performance characteristics, and users are encouraged to experiment to determine which implementation is most performant for their use-case. Heuristics are given below.

booleanQuery creates a BooleanQuery representing the request. Scales well with index size, but poorly with the number of terms being searched for.

termsFilter the default method. Uses a BooleanQuery or a TermInSetQuery depending on the number of terms. Scales well with index size, but only moderately with the number of query terms.

docValuesTermsFilter can only be used on fields with docValues data. The cache parameter is false by default. Chooses between the docValuesTermsFilterTopLevel and docValuesTermsFilterPerSegment methods using the number of query terms as a rough heuristic. Users should typically use this method instead of using docValuesTermsFilterTopLevel or docValuesTermsFilterPerSegment directly, unless they’ve done performance testing to validate one of the methods on queries of all sizes. Depending on the implementation picked, this method may rely on expensive data structures which are lazily populated after each commit. If you commit frequently and your use-case can tolerate a static warming query, consider adding one to solrconfig.xml so that this work is done as a part of the commit itself and not attached directly to user requests.

docValuesTermsFilterTopLevel can only be used on fields with docValues data. The cache parameter is false by default. Uses top-level docValues data structures to find results. These data structures are more efficient as the number of query terms grows high (over several hundred). But they are also expensive to build and need to be populated lazily after each commit, causing a sometimes-noticeable slowdown on the first query after each commit. If you commit frequently and your use-case can tolerate a static warming query, consider adding one to solrconfig.xml so that this work is done as a part of the commit itself and not attached directly to user requests.

docValuesTermsFilterPerSegment can only be used on fields with docValues data. The cache parameter is false by default. It is more efficient than the "top-level" alternative with small to medium (~500) numbers of query terms, and doesn’t suffer a slowdown on queries immediately following a commit (as docValuesTermsFilterTopLevel does - see above). But it is less performant on very large numbers of query terms.

automaton creates an AutomatonQuery representing the request with each term forming a union. Scales well with index size and moderately with the number of query terms.

Examples

{!terms f=tags}software,apache,solr,lucene
{!terms f=categoryId method=booleanQuery separator=" "}8 6 7 5309

XML Query Parser

The XmlQParserPlugin extends the QParserPlugin and supports the creation of queries from XML. Example:

ParameterValue
defTypexmlparser
q
<BooleanQuery fieldName="description">
   <Clause occurs="must">
      <TermQuery>shirt</TermQuery>
   </Clause>
   <Clause occurs="mustnot">
      <TermQuery>plain</TermQuery>
   </Clause>
   <Clause occurs="should">
      <TermQuery>cotton</TermQuery>
   </Clause>
   <Clause occurs="must">
      <BooleanQuery fieldName="size">
         <Clause occurs="should">
            <TermsQuery>S M L</TermsQuery>
         </Clause>
      </BooleanQuery>
   </Clause>
</BooleanQuery>

The XmlQParser implementation uses the SolrCoreParser class which extends Lucene’s CoreParser class. XML elements are mapped to QueryBuilder classes as follows:

XML elementQueryBuilder class
<BooleanQuery>BooleanQueryBuilder
<BoostingTermQuery>BoostingTermBuilder
<ConstantScoreQuery>ConstantScoreQueryBuilder
<DisjunctionMaxQuery>DisjunctionMaxQueryBuilder
<MatchAllDocsQuery>MatchAllDocsQueryBuilder
<RangeQuery>RangeQueryBuilder
<SpanFirst>SpanFirstBuilder
<SpanPositionRange>SpanPositionRangeBuilder
<SpanNear>SpanNearBuilder
<SpanNot>SpanNotBuilder
<SpanOr>SpanOrBuilder
<SpanOrTerms>SpanOrTermsBuilder
<SpanTerm>SpanTermBuilder
<TermQuery>TermQueryBuilder
<TermsQuery>TermsQueryBuilder
<UserQuery>UserInputQueryBuilder
<LegacyNumericRangeQuery>LegacyNumericRangeQuery(Builder) is deprecated

Customizing XML Query Parser

You can configure your own custom query builders for additional XML elements. The custom builders need to extend the SolrQueryBuilder or the SolrSpanQueryBuilder class. Example solrconfig.xml snippet:

<queryParser name="xmlparser" class="XmlQParserPlugin">
  <str name="MyCustomQuery">com.mycompany.solr.search.MyCustomQueryBuilder</str>
</queryParser>