Search API Solr for Drupal 8: Your Powerful Search Toolset

Craving for speed? Do you own a content-packed Drupal 8 website? Or maybe, as a Drupal developer in Canada, you've just developed a website running on Drupal 8 and carrying a heavy load of documents and web pages? And now you need to trigger a Google-fast search function, one that users could rely on for getting relevant search results “in the blink of an eye”. Well, if these two scenarios are (too) familiar to you, you'll want to keep reading my “plea” on the Search Api Solr for Drupal 8, more than just a module: an entire toolset of fast search functions to turbocharge your (or your client's) Drupal 8 website with.

1. Solr and Drupal: Two Robust Open Source Projects Joined Forces!

And this has proved to be “a match made in heaven”!

Apache Solr has been the flexible search platform that has been powering Drupal sites' user-friendly, fast search interfaces for a while now. 

And this “friendship” is definitely not a random one. It's the two web technologies' long list of similarities that brought them together. Let me point out to you just some of them:

  • they're both powerful technologies
  • both Solr and Drupal are open source projects, each one with its own large, active community
  • they're both ideally flexible
  • they're highly scalable
  • both of them can handle high-trafficked websites

Now that I've (hopefully) managed to outline the common ground which has been this successful friendship foundation so far, maybe you're curious to discover which, precisely, are those fast search functions that Solr can supercharge Drupal websites with. So, ready for another relevant bulleted list?

Here it goes:

  • fuzzy searches (and this is big; as search engine Solr can easily adapt to the spelling mistakes that users might enter)

     
  • search suggestions (let's call it a “did you mean” function, where users are offered a set of search terms-related keywords and synonyms to choose from)

     
  • rich-text snippets (pieces of text, similar to those in Google, where the search queries get highlighted)

     
  • most relevant results: the most relevant content goes on top of the list of suggestions

And there's more! More reasons why Solr has been the preferred search engine for Drupal websites:

  1. it does not supercharge your database server
  2. it “spoils” you with great flexibility for defining your own search settings
  3. it's blazing fast, compared to “traditional” search tools

Are these reasons enough?

2. Search API Solr for Drupal 8: A Powerful Two-in-One Module

In Drupal 7 the search functionality used to be powered not by one, but by two separate modules: Search API and Apache Solr Search. 

What did this imply? It meant double effort for the same result: double effort for developing the same add-on features, for solving various issues that were signaled etc.

Practically the two modules, along with their own ecosystems of modules, served the same purposes!

But cutting-edge Drupal 8's all about “simplifying”, so a merge of the two modules was inevitable, right? It was in this context that the module Search Api Solr for Drupal 8 resulted!

Practically now Search API is the only Solr search provider on Drupal 8 websites: a two-in-one in one module, twice as powerful!

And the whole unifying and simplifying process in Drupal 8 came with two major challenges that Search API and Apache Solr Search modules' creators, along with the Drupal community, had to respond to:

  1. making some major improvements: improving the page load time, adding multilingual support, perfecting the flexibility in data display and so on

     
  2. porting a whole set of key modules: search_api_multilingual, facets, search_api_solr and more

     

3. Search API Module in Drupal 8: A Three-Facet Search Tool

Let's call it a “multi-purpose” search tool! 

Here's are the 3 main purposes that the Search Api Solr for Drupal 8 serves:

  • it stores data (Solr, MySQL etc.), “playing the role” of a search server
  • it functions as a search index
  • it defines how data will get displayed on your Drupal 8 website, therefore taking the role of a search display, as well

Wrapping Up

Especially if you're dealing with a content-driven Drupal 8 website, this module is crucial for perfecting your visitors' overall search experience. Have you yet unlocked its potential on anyone of the sites you've developed?