Solr Flair
        Search User Interfaces Powered by Apache Solr




              Erik Hatcher


erik.hatcher@lucidimagination.com




              http://wiki.apache.org/lucene-java/
                LuceneAtApacheConUs2009
My candle burns at both ends;
            It will not last the night;
      But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
              It gives a lovely light!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_St._Vincent_Millay
patacriticism.org


"Poets are the unacknowledged engineers of the world"
                   - Monna Grémejc
Patacritical Projects


• RoSe: Rossetti Search
  rossettiarchive.org
• Collex: Collect/Exhibit
  collex.org
serendipity
Rossetti Archive




http://www.rossettiarchive.org/rose/?query=%2Bpresentation+%2B%28archivetype%3Arap%29
NINES on Collex




http://www.nines.org/search/saved?user=erikhatcher&name=wombat
NINES tag cloud




  http://www.nines.org/tags
Finding the Celtic on Collex




      http://celtic.ibiblio.org/collex/
Simile Timeline




http://celtic.ibiblio.org/timeline/show
Geographic




http://celtic.ibiblio.org/atlas/show
Graphs




http://celtic.ibiblio.org/graph/show
Solr
•
                                                                   Data

    Search server, powered by Lucene                                            DB




•
                                                Document
                                                 Document

    Indexing/searching via HTTP, responses         Documents




    in XML, Ruby, PHP, Python, XSLT, etc

•   Faceting
                                                                Solr




•   Scalability: caching, replication,
    distributed search

•   Integrates: spell checking, highlighting,                  Search Results


    more-like-this, clustering, rich document
    indexing, data import handling (RDBMS,
    and more)
Solr Flare

• Ruby on Rails plugin
• facet field detection, autosuggest, saved
  search, inverted facets, pie charts, Simile
  Timeline and Exhibit integration
• Useful for rapid prototyping
• See Flare's big brother, Blacklight, for
  production quality
Tang on Flare
• UVA radiation = blacklight
• libraries are much more than books
• opinionated
  • Ruby on Rails: best choice for an
    extensible user interface development
    framework
Blacklight @ UVa
Blacklight @ Stanford
Blacklight @ AgNIC
AJAX-Solr

•   Forked and improved from the now deprecated
    SolrJS

•   JavaScript framework agnostic (jQuery, prototype,
    Dojo, etc)

•   Query navigation state management and widgets

•   http://github.com/evolvingweb/AJAX-Solr

•   Example of SolrJS on Reuters data
    http://solrjs.solrstuff.org/
SolrJS Example
Solritas


• celeritas: swiftness, speed (Latin), origin of
  the symbol "c" for the speed of light
• solritas:Velocity template rendering of Solr
  responses
• Useful for rapid prototyping and more
Lucene in Action on Solritas




     coming soon: lucenebook.com
LucidFind




http://www.lucidimagination.com/search/?q=user+interface
Food for thought

• The interface is the application
• URLs are UI too!
• Facets aren't just for lists (with counts)
 • be creative: clouds, maps, graphs, etc...
 • entice users to forage and browse,
    facilitate serendipitous discovery
Solr Flair: Search User Interfaces Powered by Apache Solr (ApacheCon US 2009, Lucene Meetup)

Solr Flair: Search User Interfaces Powered by Apache Solr (ApacheCon US 2009, Lucene Meetup)