Alias Management

A collection alias is a virtual collection which Solr treats the same as a normal collection. The alias collection may point to one or more real collections.

Some use cases for collection aliasing:

  • Time series data

  • Reindexing content behind the scenes

For an overview of aliases in Solr, see the section Aliases.

CREATEALIAS: Create or Modify an Alias for a Collection

The CREATEALIAS action will create a new alias pointing to one or more collections. Aliases come in 2 flavors: standard and routed.

Standard aliases are simple: CREATEALIAS registers the alias name with the names of one or more collections provided by the command. If an existing alias exists, it is replaced/updated.

A standard alias can serve as a means to rename a collection, and can be used to atomically swap which backing/underlying collection is "live" for various purposes.

When Solr searches an alias pointing to multiple collections, Solr will search all shards of all the collections as an aggregated whole. While it is possible to send updates to an alias spanning multiple collections, standard aliases have no logic for distributing documents among the referenced collections so all updates will go to the first collection in the list.

/admin/collections?action=CREATEALIAS&name=name&collections=collectionlist

Routed aliases are aliases with additional capabilities to act as a kind of super-collection that route updates to the correct collection.

Routing is data driven and may be based on a temporal field or on categories specified in a field (normally string based). See Routed Aliases for some important high-level information before getting started.

$ http://localhost:8983/solr/admin/collections?action=CREATEALIAS&name=timedata&router.start=NOW/DAY&router.field=evt_dt&router.name=time&router.interval=%2B1DAY&router.maxFutureMs=3600000&create-collection.collection.configName=myConfig&create-collection.numShards=2

If run on Jan 15, 2018, the above will create an time routed alias named timedata, that contains collections with names prefixed with timedata and an initial collection named timedata_2018_01_15 will be created immediately. Updates sent to this alias with a (required) value in evt_dt that is before or after 2018-01-15 will be rejected, until the last 60 minutes of 2018-01-15. After 2018-01-15T23:00:00 documents for either 2018-01-15 or 2018-01-16 will be accepted. As soon as the system receives a document for an allowable time window for which there is no collection it will automatically create the next required collection (and potentially any intervening collections if router.interval is smaller than router.maxFutureMs). Both the initial collection and any subsequent collections will be created using the specified configset. All collection creation parameters other than name are allowed, prefixed by create-collection.

This means that one could, for example, partition their collections by day, and within each daily collection route the data to shards based on customer id. Such shards can be of any type (NRT, PULL or TLOG), and rule-based replica placement strategies may also be used.

The values supplied in this command for collection creation will be retained in alias properties, and can be verified by inspecting aliases.json in ZooKeeper.

Only updates are routed and queries are distributed to all collections in the alias.

CREATEALIAS Parameters

name

Required

Default: none

The alias name to be created. If the alias is to be routed it also functions as a prefix for the names of the dependent collections that will be created. It must therefore adhere to normal requirements for collection naming.

async

Optional

Default: none

Request ID to track this action which will be processed asynchronously.

Standard Alias Parameters

collections

Optional

Default: none

A comma-separated list of collections to be aliased. The collections must already exist in the cluster. This parameter signals the creation of a standard alias. If it is present all routing parameters are prohibited. If routing parameters are present this parameter is prohibited.

Routed Alias Parameters

Most routed alias parameters become alias properties that can subsequently be inspected and modified.

router.name

Required

Default: none

The type of routing to use. Presently only time and category and Dimensional[] are valid.

In the case of a multi-dimensional routed alias (aka "DRA"), it is required to express all the dimensions in the same order that they will appear in the dimension array. The format for a DRA router.name is Dimensional[dim1,dim2] where dim1 and dim2 are valid router.name values for each sub-dimension. Note that DRA’s are very new, and only 2D DRA’s are presently supported. Higher numbers of dimensions will be supported soon. See examples below for further clarification on how to configure individual dimensions.

router.field

Required

Default: none

The field to inspect to determine which underlying collection an incoming document should be routed to. This field is required on all incoming documents.

create-collection.*

Optional

Default: none

The * wildcard can be replaced with any parameter from the CREATE command except name. All other fields are identical in requirements and naming except that we insist that the configset be explicitly specified. The configset must be created beforehand, either uploaded or copied and modified. It’s probably a bad idea to use "data driven" mode as schema mutations might happen concurrently leading to errors.

Time Routed Alias Parameters

router.start

Required

Default: none

The start date/time of data for this time routed alias in Solr’s standard date/time format (i.e., ISO-8601 or "NOW" optionally with date math).

The first collection created for the alias will be internally named after this value. If a document is submitted with an earlier value for router.field then the earliest collection the alias points to then it will yield an error since it can’t be routed. This date/time MUST NOT have a milliseconds component other than 0. Particularly, this means NOW will fail 999 times out of 1000, though NOW/SECOND, NOW/MINUTE, etc., will work just fine.

TZ

Optional

Default: UTC

The timezone to be used when evaluating any date math in router.start or router.interval. This is equivalent to the same parameter supplied to search queries, but understand in this case it’s persisted with most of the other parameters as an alias property.

If GMT-4 is supplied for this value then a document dated 2018-01-14T21:00:00:01.2345Z would be stored in the myAlias_2018-01-15_01 collection (assuming an interval of +1HOUR).

router.interval

Required

Default: none

A date math expression that will be appended to a timestamp to determine the next collection in the series. Any date math expression that can be evaluated if appended to a timestamp of the form 2018-01-15T16:17:18 will work here.

router.maxFutureMs

Optional

Default: 600000 milliseconds

The maximum milliseconds into the future that a document is allowed to have in router.field for it to be accepted without error. If there was no limit, then an erroneous value could trigger many collections to be created.

router.preemptiveCreateMath

Optional

Default: none

A date math expression that results in early creation of new collections.

If a document arrives with a timestamp that is after the end time of the most recent collection minus this interval, then the next (and only the next) collection will be created asynchronously.

Without this setting, collections are created synchronously when required by the document time stamp and thus block the flow of documents until the collection is created (possibly several seconds). Preemptive creation reduces these hiccups. If set to enough time (perhaps an hour or more) then if there are problems creating a collection, this window of time might be enough to take corrective action. However, after a successful preemptive creation the collection is consuming resources without being used, and new documents will tend to be routed through it only to be routed elsewhere.

Also, note that router.autoDeleteAge is currently evaluated relative to the date of a newly created collection, so you may want to increase the delete age by the preemptive window amount so that the oldest collection isn’t deleted too soon.

It must be possible to subtract the interval specified from a date, so if prepending a minus sign creates invalid date math, this will cause an error. Also note that a document that is itself destined for a collection that does not exist will still trigger synchronous creation up to that destination collection but will not trigger additional async preemptive creation. Only one type of collection creation can happen per document. Example: 90MINUTES.

This property is empty by default indicating just-in-time, synchronous creation of new collections.

router.autoDeleteAge

Optional

Default: none

A date math expression that results in the oldest collections getting deleted automatically.

The date math is relative to the timestamp of a newly created collection (typically close to the current time), and thus this must produce an earlier time via rounding and/or subtracting. Collections to be deleted must have a time range that is entirely before the computed age. Collections are considered for deletion immediately prior to new collections getting created. Example: /DAY-90DAYS.

The default is not to delete.

Category Routed Alias Parameters

router.maxCardinality

Optional

Default: none

The maximum number of categories allowed for this alias. This setting safeguards against the inadvertent creation of an infinite number of collections in the event of bad data.

router.mustMatch

Optional

Default: none

A regular expression that the value of the field specified by router.field must match before a corresponding collection will be created. Changing this setting after data has been added will not alter the data already indexed.

Any valid Java regular expression pattern may be specified. This expression is pre-compiled at the start of each request so batching of updates is strongly recommended. Overly complex patterns will produce CPU or garbage collection overhead during indexing as determined by the JVM’s implementation of regular expressions.

Dimensional Routed Alias Parameters

router.#.

Optional

Default: none

This prefix denotes which position in the dimension array is being referred to for purposes of dimension configuration.

For example in a Dimensional[time,category] alias, router.0.start would be used to set the start time for the time dimension.

CREATEALIAS Response

The output will simply be a responseHeader with details of the time it took to process the request. To confirm the creation of the alias, you can look in the Solr Admin UI, under the Cloud section and find the aliases.json file. The initial collection for routed aliases should also be visible in various parts of the admin UI.

Examples using CREATEALIAS

Create an alias named "testalias" and link it to the collections named "foo" and "bar".

V1 API

Input

http://localhost:8983/solr/admin/collections?action=CREATEALIAS&name=testalias&collections=foo,bar&wt=xml

Output

<response>
  <lst name="responseHeader">
    <int name="status">0</int>
    <int name="QTime">122</int>
  </lst>
</response>

V2 API Input

curl -X POST http://localhost:8983/api/collections -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '
  {
    "create-alias":{
      "name":"testalias",
      "collections":["foo","bar"]
    }
  }
'

Output

{
  "responseHeader": {
    "status": 0,
    "QTime": 125
  }
}

A somewhat contrived example demonstrating creating a TRA with many additional collection creation options.

V1 API

Input

http://localhost:8983/solr/admin/collections?action=CREATEALIAS
    &name=somethingTemporalThisWayComes
    &router.name=time
    &router.start=NOW/MINUTE
    &router.field=evt_dt
    &router.interval=%2B2HOUR
    &router.maxFutureMs=14400000
    &create-collection.collection.configName=_default
    &create-collection.router.name=implicit
    &create-collection.router.field=foo_s
    &create-collection.numShards=3
    &create-collection.shards=foo,bar,baz
    &create-collection.tlogReplicas=1
    &create-collection.pullReplicas=1
    &create-collection.property.foobar=bazbam
    &wt=xml

Output

<response>
  <lst name="responseHeader">
    <int name="status">0</int>
    <int name="QTime">1234</int>
  </lst>
</response>

V2 API

Input

curl -X POST http://localhost:8983/api/collections -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '
  {
    "create-alias" : {
      "name": "somethingTemporalThisWayComes",
      "router" : {
        "name": "time",
        "field": "evt_dt",
        "start":"NOW/MINUTE",
        "interval":"+2HOUR",
        "maxFutureMs":"14400000"
      },
      "create-collection" : {
        "config":"_default",
        "router": {
          "name":"implicit",
          "field":"foo_s"
        },
        "shards":"foo,bar,baz",
        "numShards": 3,
        "tlogReplicas":1,
        "pullReplicas":1,
        "properties" : {
          "foobar":"bazbam"
        }
      }
    }
  }
'

Output

{
    "responseHeader": {
        "status": 0,
        "QTime": 1234
    }
}

Another example, this time of a Dimensional Routed Alias demonstrating how to specify parameters for the individual dimensions

V1 API

Input

http://localhost:8983/solr/admin/collections?action=CREATEALIAS
    &name=dra_test1
    &router.name=Dimensional[time,category]
    &router.0.start=2019-01-01T00:00:00Z
    &router.0.field=myDate_tdt
    &router.0.interval=%2B1MONTH
    &router.0.maxFutureMs=600000
    &create-collection.collection.configName=_default
    &create-collection.numShards=2
    &router.1.maxCardinality=20
    &router.1.field=myCategory_s
    &wt=xml

Output

<response>
  <lst name="responseHeader">
    <int name="status">0</int>
    <int name="QTime">1234</int>
  </lst>
</response>

V2 API

Input

curl -X POST http://localhost:8983/api/collections -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '
  {
    "create-alias":{
      "name":"dra_test1",
      "router": {
        "name": "Dimensional[time,category]",
        "routerList" : [ {
              "field":"myDate_tdt",
              "start":"2019-01-01T00:00:00Z",
              "interval":"+1MONTH",
              "maxFutureMs":600000
          },{
               "field":"myCategory_s",
               "maxCardinality":20
          }]
      },
      "create-collection": {
        "config":"_default",
        "numShards":2
      }
    }
  }
'

Output

{
    "responseHeader": {
        "status": 0,
        "QTime": 1234
    }
}

LISTALIASES: List of all aliases in the cluster

V1 API

http://localhost:8982/solr/admin/collections?action=LISTALIASES

V2 API

curl -X GET http://localhost:8983/api/cluster/aliases

The LISTALIASES action does not take any parameters.

LISTALIASES Response

The output will contain a list of aliases with the corresponding collection names.

Examples using LISTALIASES

Input

List the existing aliases, requesting information as XML from Solr:

http://localhost:8983/solr/admin/collections?action=LISTALIASES&wt=xml

Output

<response>
    <lst name="responseHeader">
        <int name="status">0</int>
        <int name="QTime">0</int>
    </lst>
    <lst name="aliases">
        <str name="testalias1">collection1</str>
        <str name="testalias2">collection1,collection2</str>
    </lst>
    <lst name="properties">
        <lst name="testalias1"/>
        <lst name="testalias2">
            <str name="someKey">someValue</str>
        </lst>
    </lst>
</response>

ALIASPROP: Modify Alias Properties for a Collection

The ALIASPROP action modifies the properties (metadata) on an alias. If a key is set with a value that is empty it will be removed.

V1 API

http://localhost:8983/admin/collections?action=ALIASPROP&name=techproducts_alias&property.foo=bar

V2 API

curl -X POST http://localhost:8983/api/collections -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '
{
  "set-alias-property":{
    "name":"techproducts_alias",
    "properties": {"foo":"bar"}
  }
}
'
This command allows you to revise any property. No alias specific validation is performed. Routed aliases may cease to function, function incorrectly, or cause errors if property values are set carelessly.

ALIASPROP Parameters

name

Required

Default: none

The alias name on which to set properties.

property.name=value (v1)

Optional

Default: none

Set property name to value.

"properties":{"name":"value"} (v2)

Optional

Default: none

A dictionary of name/value pairs of properties to be set.

async

Optional

Default: none

Request ID to track this action which will be processed asynchronously.

ALIASPROP Response

The output will simply be a responseHeader with details of the time it took to process the request. To confirm the creation of the property or properties, you can look in the Solr Admin UI, under the Cloud section and find the aliases.json file or use the LISTALIASES api command.

DELETEALIAS: Delete a Collection Alias

V1 API

http://localhost:8983/solr/admin/collections?action=DELETEALIAS&name=testalias

V2 API

curl -X POST http://localhost:8983/api/collections -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '
{
  "delete-alias":{
    "name":"testalias"
  }
}
'

DELETEALIAS Parameters

name

Required

Default: none

The name of the alias to delete.

async

Optional

Default: none

Request ID to track this action which will be processed asynchronously.

DELETEALIAS Response

The output will simply be a responseHeader with details of the time it took to process the request. To confirm the removal of the alias, you can look in the Solr Admin UI, under the Cloud section, and find the aliases.json file.