As part of a recent client project at PingV, we needed to develop a method to display search pages with predefined filters that would display results instantly, without the need to enter a query – and without limiting the end users from further filtering the results on their own. Currently, Apache Solr doesn’t provide this level of customization, so it was necessary to build a custom implementation. I decided to use the Search API page module as a starting point and borrowed heavily from that implementation, removing Search API-specific functionality and adding in the ability to use filters.
You can find the result of that effort here: http://drupal.org/project/apachesolr_page
Obviously, more needs to be done to make this as powerful and flexible as it needs to be for widespread use; but I feel it has great potential, and wanted to share it here to gain input on the concept and how best to apply it going forward. Feel free to comment with your thoughts and suggestions.
/Robin
Comments
Why not just use search_api directly?
Hello Robin,
Was there a reason that you didn't simply use search_api module? It does everything that you needed to out of the box. I know exactly why you did what you did, but I just switched out apachesolr module for search_api. It was a bit of a pain, but so much more powerful and flexible. Plus it does Views out of the box as well (and now does MLT queries).
This isn't a criticism, I am just curious :)
Cheers,
David